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7 



THE REM. NEW YORK 




THE ARION BALL 



THE 
REAL NEW YORK 



p.v Drawings ry 

RUPERT HUGHES HY. MAYER 



Drift if you will in Venice, 

Or drowse in Florence brown ; 
Drink till you drop in Munich, 

Or drench in London town ; 
Drudge out your life in Chicago, 

Or drone in old Rome your dream; 
Drain the delights of Vienna, 

Or Paris with walls of cream ; 
But drive me not far from Broadway, 

When New York's aglow and agleam. 

From Peter Simes' " The Muse in Town:^ 




I y < ' o ' > 3 3 •» i ' 



1904 
THE ^AiAkT SET PUBLISHING COMPANY 

452 Fifth Avenue 
LONDON NEW YORK 



5", , 



LIBRARY of noWGRESS 
Two Cooies Rer.«iveci 

JUN 23 1904 

\\ Coo.vrJarht Entrv 
CJfLASS Ct XXc. Mo. 

S 1 1 z ^ 



COPY B 



Copyrighted, 1904, by 

The Smart Set Publishing Company 



Registered at 

Stationers' Hall, London, England 



ALL RIGHTS 



Published June, 1904 



,••■«, e -* I e e » 



i » < t « « 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 



n. — Getting 'Round 

The hotel for lone women — The New York 
sky vs. Italy's— T]^ Flatiron, its beauty 
and Its breezes — Twenty-third Street and 
Fifth Avenue, and the pageant of fair women 
— A department store; shoppers and shop- 
girls— A steamer landing— Passing the cus- 
toms—The Elevated railroad — The Subway 
—The New York rush and transit problems 



III.— The Beau Monde 

The Waldorf; a revolving door — Peacock 
Row— The people in the corridors— The ball- 
rooms and dining-rooms— Oscar — The Uni- 
versity Club; its dining-room— The Lyceum 
Theatre— A New York audience— Supper at 
the Savoy— A midnight spin through Central 
Park— Riverside Drive and Momingside 
Park under the stars 



IV.— The Gamblers 

'^^ii/u^^^ ''—Chicago streets and New York's 
— When the town was "wide open" — Life 
under the Lid— The barrooms— A free 
Tunch"— The prize-fighters as hosts— The 
late Steve Brodie— Gambling— Runnincr the 
gantlet — Magnitude of the sport — Ex- 
changes and bucketshops— Women as gam- 
blers— Canfield's palace— Playing the races 
—A typical poolroom — A raid — A ride in 
the patrol wagon— At the Sign of the Green 
Lamp-posts 

v.— The Tenderloin at Night 

Broadway aglow— The women who loiter— 
Ihe theatre crowds— Music-halls— Auto- 
matic vaudeville— Herald Square at night— 
Ihe JournaVs free coffee— Emptving of 
the theatres — After-theatre suppers — Late 
extras— The Rathskellers— More trouble 



PAGE 



I. — Getting In |i 

A wreck and its consequences — The arrival- 
The sky line 



23 



49 



67 



91 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI.— Sunday in Town 103 

High and Low Church — the numberless 
creeds, rituals and languages in town — Fa- 
mous preachers — Church architecture — Fash - 
ionable churches — Wall Street on Simday — 
The Easter parade — Fifth Avenue — Upper 
Broadway — -When the college girls come 
home for Easter — Central Park on Sunday; 
the carriages — Riverside Drive by daylight — 
The Hudson — A sunset — The diner de luxe 
at Sherry's — A concert at Carnegie Hall — 
Great conductors who visit New York — New 
York as a capital of music — Supper at the 
Beaux-Arts 

Vn. — Assorted Sabbaths 125 

The good side of New York — The crowded 
churches — The free hospitals — Organized 
charities — The Board of Health — Breakfast 
in bed — The Sunday papers — The Personal 
column as a secret post-office — The tameness 
of a New York Sunday — The Raines law — 
The "Family Entrance" — Hypocrisy and 
laziness — Quenching the thirst — Sunday 
night in town — The sacred concerts — A sur- 
reptitious prize-fight — Police interference — 
In prison — Professional bondsmen — Vice is 
expensive 

VI T I. —Chinatown 147 

The number of Chinese and their industries 
— Their clubs, newspaper and religion — The 
joss house— The Chinese new year — The 
funeral feast — Chinese and white women — 
Opium — The half-breed children — A restau- 
rant and Chinese bill of fare — A Chinese shop 
— The Chinese theatre — A typical plot — 
The Chinese actress — The audience, the 
orchestra and the players 

IX. — New York's Garden of Eden 167 

Madison Square Garden — Its beauty— Di- 
ana, the patron goddess — The size of the 
building and what it contains — The various 
shows — The Horse Show — Venice — The Arion 
and other masked balls — Typical scenes — An 
early morning drive — Sunrise in New York 

X. — Downtown 193 

Boston vs. New York — The farmer and the 
schoolmarm come to town — The Broadway 
crowd — A tall building — A city under one 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

roof — The risks of modern city life — " News- 
paper Row" — The Brooklyn Bridge — City 
Hall Park — A monument to Boss Tweed — 
The Tombs Prison — The Criminal Court 
House — The Post-Office — Crooked alleys 
downtown 

XI. — Money 211 

The Chamber of Commerce — The Clearing 
House— The Sub-Treasury— The Stock Ex- 
change — The Produce Exchange — The 
Wheat Pit — Fraunces's Tavern 

XII.— Clubland 219 

How to get into a New York clubhouse — 
Various types of club — Political, religious, 
college, women's, Greek letter fraternities, 
trades, crafts, professions — Athletic clubs — 
Literary, Bohemian and social clubs — Club- 
window life — Some odd clubs — Clubland 's 
new centre 

XII L— The Many Peoples of New York 231 

New York's cosmopolitanism — Its popula- 
tion and environs — Rapid growth — Tran- 
sient population — Foreign cities inside New 
York — Foreign languages, chiirches, papers, 
theatres, festivals — The various colonies — 
A Finnish bath — A Russian Easter — Bravery 
of the Irish — What New York offers the in- 
vader 

XIV.— Where to Eat 251. 

The cookery problem in New York — The 
restaurant system — ^The cosmopolitan 
menus— Cheap lunches — The street stands 
and the buffet luncheon— Chop houses — 
The American oyster and clam — Culinary 
aristocracy — Old-time restaurants — Some 
large establishments — The kitchen at the 
Waldorf— The lunch clubs— The New York 
table d'hote— Roof- gardens — The Park res- 
taurants — The sporty places — American 
menus— The Chinese restaurants— The 
French, Gennan and other national resorts 

XV. — The Hunt for Bohemia 271 

Bohemia: Where and what is it? — The old 
Bohemia at "Maria's" — Professional Bo- 
hemians — Imitation Bohemianism — The 
secret haunts of Bohemians— Quick growth 
of the Bohemian cafes — Cafe Liberty— 



CHAPTER 



XVI. 



PACxE 



289 



XVII. 



307 



Contents 

Hungarian dishes, sauces, wines and music 
— The only Bohemians are Hungarians 

-Summer in New York 

The summer exodus — Father Knickerbocker 
a grass-widower in summer — Schemes for 
fighting the heat — Summer costume — Roof- 
garden dining — The suffering slums — May- 
day and May queens — Athletics in town — 
The coaches — The racetracks — The cool 
environs of New York 

-At Coney by the Sea 

The most elaborate pleasure resort in the 
world — The old Coney — Its two good points 
— The new Coney — Luna Park and its 
wonders — The Durbar — Dreamland and its 
ballroom over the ocean — The destruction 
of New York 

XVIII.— Let Us Go A-Slumming 315 

New York's slums and those of other cities 
— Drunkenness in various capitals — Sor- 
rows of rich and poor — Amelioration — The 
crime of aiding beggars — The old haunts of 
vice — Teaching children to play — The 
Morgue — The city hospitals and prisons — • 
The Bowery of old and now — Baxter street 
— The Ghetto — The most densely populated 
spot in the world — The fish market — The 
sweat-shop — The Lung Block — A contrast — 
The Metropolitan Opera House on a gala 
nieht 



XIX.— Night in the Slums 347 

A Bowery concert hall — A moral immor- 
ality show — A night's lodging for five cents 
— Amateur night — A concert saloon — - 
Viciousness on the tipper West Side — 
East Side gangs — Dulness vnder the lid — 
A Jewish vaudeville — A street fight — 
Pickpockets and low saloons — Knockout 
drops — A police court scene 

XX. — A Round-Up 367 

The many faults of New York: noise, 
crowding, impoliteness, expense, homeless- 
ness — Bronx Park — The Jumel mansion 
and other historic places — The Columbia 
Library — The Metropolitan Gallery — Private 
collections — The Aquarium- -Battery Park 
--Bowling Green — The Statue of Liberty — 
A storm in the Bay— Daybreak — Bon 
voyage ! 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Arion Ball (frontispiece) 

Matinee Girls 

The Czar of a Departnient Store 

At the Custom House . 

Under Fire 

On the Rialto 

A Bowery Soubrette 

A Box at the Opera 

The Old Coney Island 

A Knockout by the Police 

Chinatown 

The Arion Ball Committee 

After the Ball . 

Around the Ticker 

The Night Hawk 

The Ghetto . 

Hurdy-Gurdy Dance . 

A Busy Saturday Night 

A Gala Night at the Cafe Boulevard 

At the Races .... 

Coney Island . . . . , 

Amateur Night at a Bowery Theatre 

The Bowery . . . . . 



"First Visit to Noo York?" 

De Peyster of New York 

The French Twins 

The Parson 

Miss Myrtle Collis 

River Scene — Harbor at Night 

They Meet Again . 

The Flatiron on a Windy Day 

" Cash! " . 

The White Man's Burden 

A Sidewalk Merchant 

A New Yorker . 

The Waldorf-Astoria Cafe 

A New Yorker . 

Matches Mary 

The Kangaroo Walk . 

Riverside Drive at Night 

"Ananias" Blake 

The Pretzel Pedler 

A Gambler in Futures 

A New York Gambler . 

"'Diaphanous' Wins by a Nostril 

Astronomy for Five Cents 

The "Barker" 

"Kellner!" 

In the Haymarket 

A New Yorker 



•y 



FULL PAGE 
FACING 

16 

32 ^ 

64 

80^ 

96^ 

112 - 

128 '^ 

144 -' 

160 -^ 

176- 

192^ 

208^ 

224 ^ 

240 y 

256 ^^ 

272 y 

288-"' 

304 

320 

336 

352 

PAGE 

13 
14 
17 
18 
21 
22 
25 
27 
35 
39 
41 
47 
52 
58 
61 
64 
66 
69 
74 
77 
84 
87 
93 
96 
99 
101 
105 



Xi6t of 1[Uu0tration0 



A New Yorker . 

Of the Broadway S(|uad 

In the Park 

Sunday Night Amusements 

A New Yorker . 

"Gargon" 

A Sunday Outing 

A New Yorker 

In a Chinatown Audience . 

In the Chinese Theatre 

A Stage Beauty . 

A New Yorker 

A Belle of the Arion Ball , 

In the Pageant 

The Surface Cars 

From the Twentieth Floor 

In the Astor Library 

A New Yorker 

A New Yorker . 

The Chart Expert on 'Change 

On the Stock Exchange 

A New Yorker 

At the German Club 

The Lotos Club Entertainer 

A New Yorker . 

A New Yorker 

In Front of a Yiddish Theatre 

On Darkey Fifth Avenue 

A New York Alderman 

At Dennett's 

A New Yorker .... 

The Syrian Cafe 

A New Yorker .... 

A New Yorker 

Spaghetti ..... 

When Two Hungarians Play Card 

A Roof-Garden "Stunt" 

Pitcher . 

Catcher 

The Tipster . 

The Steeplechase 

An Old Coney Islander 

The Gridiron 

A New Yorker 

On Baxter Street 

In Little Italy 

On Thompson Street 

A-Slumming by Night 

West Side Swell . 

" De Gang" 

The Morning After 

On Fifth Avenue . 

From the Fatherland 

"Bon Voyage!" 



PAGE 

108 

113 

117 

121 

127 

131 

137 

151 

155 

163 

164 

169 

184 

186 

192 

197 

207 

209 

213 

217 

218 

220 

223 

227 

233 

237 

240 

247 

248 

253 

261 

265 

267 

277 

281 

285 

293 

299 

299 

303 

309 

313 

314 

318 

325 

329 

334 

346 

349 

357 

363 

374 

376 

384 



THE REAL NEW YORK 



Chapter I 

GETTING IN — A WRECK AND ITS CONSEQUENCES — THE 
ARRIVAL — THE SKY-LINE 

THE man from Chicago felt talkative. The 
clickety-clickety-click of the wheels got 
on his nerves. The sight of all these men 
and women stupidly riding for hours with no 
more conversation than goes on in a bed of 
oysters outraged his Western ideas of human 
brotherhood. At length he could stand it no 
longer. He resolved to break the ice at any 
cost. He juggled his Adam's apple a long while, 
then made so bold as to address the man across 
the aisle. 

"Train seems to be on time — for a wonder." 

The stranger across the aisle, realizing that 
they had never been introduced, simply gave 
him a look of pained amazement and returned 
to the advertisement pages of the Atlantic 
Monthly, which he had bought from the news- 
boy and read through three times. 

The man from Chicago felt the ice thicken; 
he muttered to himself: 

"Mean thing to say of anybody, but I bet 
he's from Boston." 



12 Zbc IRcal mew ^ovk 

He subsided for awhile, but at last he bent 
forward and touched the man in front of him. 

''First visit to Noo York?" (By the way, 
does anyone ever say New York ?) 

The man in front was that rare bird, a born 
New Yorker; he was insulted that anyone should 
fail to see this glory sticking out all over him. 
He grunted and said nothing. 

The man from Chicago grew desperate. He 
whirled his chair on its pivot, and, so to speak, 
faced the man behind him. 

"Who are the Democrats going to nominate 
this time .^" 

It seemed there was no escape. But this man 
was a genius; he closed his eyes and pretended 
to be asleep. The Chicagoan rose with a sigh 
and started for the door. On the sofa-seat he 
saw two sad and lonely-looking fellows, evidently 
twins. It would be a kindness to cheer them 
up. He sank down, with the leading remark: 

"This winter has put the oldest inhabit- 
ant out of business, eh ?'' 

'' Parlez-vous — .^ " said one. 

'' Francais, monsieur?'' said the other. 

''Neinr gasped the Chicagoan, and he fled 
to the smoking compartment. 

It was packed with humanity and tobacco 
fog. Everyone was puffing desperately and no- 
body saying a word to anybody. The Chica- 
goan, being what is known as a sad wag, sang 
out: 



iBcttino 1In 13 

"Full house beats three of a kind, eh?" 
Everybody looked up at him and nobody an- 
swered. 

The Talkative Man stood helpless in the aisle, 
feeling tliat he was about to die of ingrowing 
conversation. Suddenly there was a grinding of 
brakes, a jolting, thudding, creaking, and the 




"first visit to NOO YORK?" 

Talkative Man sat down in four or five different 
spots in rapid succession. 

The train had come to a short stop. When 
people had picked themselves from each other's 
lap, those passengers who were next to win- 
dows — and were powerful enough to get the 
windows open — popped their heads out. The 
others flew to the platforms. Reckless fiends of 
valor got off and walked along the ground. A 
young farmer had waved the train to a stand- 
still in the midst of bleak and barren meadow^s; 
he breathlessly explained, with a megaphonic 
voice and arms like a windmill, that there was a 



14 



^be IReal IRew Oorh 



washout just ahead. If he had not stopped the 
train, it would have been ditched and somebody 
hurt. 

In their rapture, the passengers took up a 
purse, each contributing what he thought his Hfe 
was worth — after saving. These valuations, like 

tax confessions, showed a 
most commendable mod- 
esty, but the farmer had 
never before had a personal 
meeting with so much 
money except in the form 
of an inherited mortgage. 

When one of the railway 

officials, who dared to ride 

on his own road — like a 

rash physician who takes 

his own pills — told the 

farmer that he would get a 

life-pass, the rustic's delight 

knew no bounds. He 

allowed, vummed and 

s wo wed that he would just 

naturally not lose no time taking a trip to Noo 

Yark, a town as he had always wanted to have 

a peek at, but had never saw. 

So everybody was happy — rescuer and res- 
cued; till it was learned that it would require 
at least eight hours to mend the bridge. 

In time the most profane exhausted their vo- 
cabularies. There was nothing to do but loaf 




DE PEYSTER OF NEW YORK 



(Bcttino 1In i-^ 

and talk. Gradually strangers fell into conver- 
sation. The man across the aisle, the man in 
front, the man behind, and various smokers ad- 
dressed the Chicagoan. It was the chance of 
his life. He snubbed them all, cold and hard. 

But the ruling passion is strong in life, and 
silence gave him such a sore throat that he was 
soon buzzing away in a manner that led the 
others to regret their advances. 

The farmer brought buttermilk and crullers 
from the distant farm and added heaviness both 
to his purse and to the systems of his patrons. 

The upshot of it was that before the train 
started everybody knew everybody else. The 
most formal women and the most formidable 
were chatting freely to the train crew, to the 
farmer, or to anyone who cared to chip in. 

There was one knot of male passengers who, 
after exchanging that universal letter of intro- 
duction, a cigar, told one another their real names 
and their business — more or less accurately. 
They were all bound for New York and were 
interested to see how different their motives 
were. 

The Chicagoan, A. J. Joyce by name, was, it 
is needless to say, bent on trade; but, strange 
to say, not on any matter connected with pork. 
He said he was the representative of a manu- 
facturer of church vestments. This interested 
a bystander who buttoned his collar behind. He 
shook hands with the Chicagoan and said: 



16 Z\)c IRcal mcvv l^ork 

''I, too, am a worker in religious fields. 1 
am a preacher, and I have been delivering a 
series of sermons on New York as the Home of 
Mammon. They attracted a good deal of at- 
tention in Terre Haute. You may have heard 
of them. No ? I'll send you a set. Well, you 
see, I have been basing my sermons purely on 
what I have read. So I thought I'd spend 
my vacation studying the evils in their ac- 
tuality." 

The Chicagoan looked a bit uneasy, and he 
walked aside with a New Yorker. 

" Take me away before I faint," he said. *' I'm 
going to New York to see the evil side, too; but 
I'm not going to preach. I want to practise. 
I know the warm spots of Chicago pretty well, 
and I'm tired of 'em. It's my opinion that New 
York is a Methodist revival compared to Chi- 
cago, but I propose to give it a fair chance, and 
see what it can do. But I'm afraid New York 
is a rank amatoor." 

"Let me show you round a bit," said his 
companion. '*I am from New Hampshire, but 
I've been a newspaper man in New York for 
ten years, and I know a thing or two. I think 
we can at least give you a run for your money." 

The reporter (known even in his own pro- 
fession by the modest name of "Ananias" 
Blake) registered in petto a vow that he would 
turn the Chicagoan's hair white, or die trying, all 
for the greater glory of Greater New York. 







MATINEE GIRLS 



(Betting lln 



17 



At the same moment a younger man was 
taking the minister aside and saying: 

"Perhaps I can aid you, suh. I'm from the 

So'th originally, suh; but 
I know New Yawk well, 
and I can show you the 
truth abo't its vicious- 
ness." 

There was an ominous 
twinkle in his eye, which 
the grateful parson did 
not see. 

"And may I ask what 
is your profession ?" 

** Don't shoot, but I'm 
a poet by trade," said 
the youth, with a blush 
of shame. "By name, 
Peter Simes." He 
blushed again. '* My 
parents were not poets, 
and I'll never live down 
my name. But I'd like to show you the true 
wickedness of New Yawk." 

He did not add that he was a disciple of 
Walt Whitman, and, like him, believed that the 
city of Manhattan is the greatest and best in 
the world and can do no wrong. He did not 
confess his dark plan to keep the preacher from 
seeing anything but the good side of the 
metropolis, which is a metropolis in vice no less 




THE FRENCH TWINS 



18 



Zbc IReal IRew ^ov\{ 



than in earnestness and magnificent charity. 
But Simes vowed to send that preacher back to 
Terre Haute convinced that New York needs 
only a Httle jasper to be a heavenly home. 

Meanwhile, the born New Yorker, Gerald De 
Peyster, had unbent enough to strike up a flirta- 
tion with a girl from San Francisco, who, like 
most of the women from that Paris of the Pa- 
cific, was distinguished, sophis- 
ticated, pretty and vivacious, 
with a something different that 
could hardly be called frisky, 
but — let us say Sanfrancisky. 

Miss Myrtle CoUis said she 
was on her way to Europe to 
study painting in Paris. The 
^v delay of the train made her 
^v nervous. She had a steamer to 
\ catch the next morning, and she 
had certain purchases to make 
before she could sail, and she 
was afraid she would be left behind. 

"You're not going through New York with- 
out stopping!" said De Peyster. 

"Oh, everybody says there's nothing worth 
seeing," Miss Collis sneered, prettily. "It's 
just a big, ugly commercial town. Nobody 
lives there that can live abroad, and everybody 
who lives there thinks only of money and 
excitement. There's no artistic atmosphere. 
The Quartier Latin for me " 




THE PARSON 



(Betting flu i^ 

The lone, lorn Frenchmen, who had drifted 
about exiled by their languao-e, pricked up their 
ears at the two familiar words, and, lifting their 
hats, exclaimed: 

^^ Pardon, mademoiselle, est-ce que ?" 

" — vous aimez le Quartier Latin? " 

''Old, ouil beaucoup, beaucoup!'' said the 
girl, in purest San Francisco French. ''Mais je 
n etuis jamais la, vous savez, messieurs.'' 

The New Yorker spoke French too, so the 
four were soon rattling away, and De Peyster 
warmed to the task of defending New York as a 
rival of Paris. Furthermore, he added that an 
English friend of his was to land the next day, 
and he was determined to convince him that 
New York could also give London points on 
general joy. 

De Peyster kept trying to shunt the French- 
men off on a switch, and at last he got Miss CoUis 
away from their devoted courtesies. 

*'I wish I had a chance," he said, earnestly, 
"to prove to you how unjust you are to the most 
beautiful, the most cosmopolitan, the least ap- 
preciated city in the world, my New York." 

"But I must catch that steamer," Miss Collis 
protested. "If I miss it I'll have to spend a 
week." 

"I hope you miss it," he said. "If you do, 
will you let me prove what I say.^" 

" Isn't this a rather short acquaintance ?'' 

"Oh, but, if you'll pardon me, I'm a gentle- 



20 ^be IRcal IRcw l?orh 

man, thanks at least to my family — the De Peys- 
ter crowd, you know." 

"All right," she answered, cheerily. **I'm 
not afraid even of a De Peyster. But to make 
it interesting, suppose we make a bet. If you 
can't convince me, you'll give me a box of gloves. 
If you do, I'll give you a box of cigars." 

"Er — who's to select the cigars.^" he asked, 
anxiously. 

"The winner!" she cried. And they shook 
hands on it, just as the French twins surrounded 
them again. They had been at one side quar- 
reling over the beautiful Americaine; each 
claimed to have seen her first. 

A light shower came up now, and drove 
everyone back to the train. Eventually it 
moved off, and, in an hour, was emptying its 
human freight at Jersey City. 

As they crossed on the ferry, they were all 
old friends for the time being. De Peyster 
had actually added Miss Collis's hand-baggage 
to his own. The rain had passed and the 
sunset was gorgeous on the sky behind them; 
but their eyes were only for the city ahead. It 
was silhouetted in glistening shadow against 
the ashen East, and loomed like a twilit sierra, 
star-sprinkled, and spangled with ten thousand 
lights. 

There before them was the famous sky-line, 
a contour as distinct from any other in the 
world as that of London, or Moscow, Constanti- 



(Bcttiiuj 1In 



21 



nople, or Benares; not low and scrawly as the 
profile of other cities, but bulking enormous; 
out of the mass of great buildings, greater build- 
ings rising unimaginably 
high, like huge stalac- 
tites thrusting upward. 
Compared with 
New York," cried De 
Peyster, "every other 
in the world is a 
quat little village." 

The broad 
river was rest- 
1 e s s with 
waves chop- 
ping every 
which way, 
and these 
numerable 
with wet color 
The stream 
tumbling 
where tough 
g e r i n g and 




MISS MYRTLE COLLIS 



were scooped into in- ^^ 
little cups splashing over 
of all conceivable dyes, 
was crisscrossed with the 
wakes of ferryboats. Every 
little tugboats were swag- 
shoving the overloaded barges of commerce. 
But the gloaming sanctified all, and the briny 
smell of new-washed air was an incense that 
stung the nostrils with delight. 

The western sky, filled with the sunset, was 
one long banner of living glory. To the south 
rose a colossal statue of empurpled shadow, in 



22 



Sbe IRcal mew ^ovh 



whose exalted hand was a high torch, which at 
that very moment blossomed into fire. 

"Look!" exclaimed the young Southern poet, 
*' Liberty!" And he caught off his hat in an 
impulse of reverence. 



^'W^^^^P 


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1- .? 



Chapter II 

GETTING ROUND — ^THE HOTEL FOR LONE WOMEN THE 

NEW YORK SKY VS. ITALY'S THE FLATIRON, ITS BEAUTY 

AND ITS BREEZES TWENTY-THIRD STREET AND FIFTH 

AVENUE, AND THE PAGEANT OF FAIR WOMEN A DEPART- 
MENT store; SHOPPERS AND SHOPGIRLS A STEAMER 

LANDING PASSING THE CUSTOMS THE ELEVATED 

RAILROAD THE SUBWAY THE NEW YORK RUSH AND 

TRANSIT PROBLEMS 

THE next morning — a Saturday — De Peys- 
ter was swinging spickly and spanly 
down Fifth Avenue toward his chib. He was 
thinking of his chance acquaintance from San 
Francisco. No friends had met her the evening 
before at the New Jersey or tlie New York ferry 
houses; for, as she had explained, she knew no 
one in New York and was going to sail straight 
for France the next noon. 

She had allowed him to ride up with her to 
the Hotel Martha Washington, under the regis 
of whose name lone women are chaperoned from 
evil appearances. Miss Collis had insisted on 
paying her own cab-fare, and had almost indig- 
nantly declined De Peyster's invitation to join 
him at dinner, theatre or supper. 

But this morning he still thought of her — a 
long remembrance for De Peyster. And when 
he reached his club he passed by on the other 



24 z\)c IRcal IRew lOork 

side. He said to himself that it was the crisp 
and spicy air, but he knew it was a desire to 
tempt Fate into a coincidence. He turned aside 
at what Mr. Henry James would call "the" 
Thirtieth Street and dawdled by the door of the 
tall, stern hotel, which, outwardly at least, bears 
more resemblance to George than to Martha. 
Several women issued from the door, but De 
Peyster regarded them with disdain. 

Then he walked round the block and dawdled 
past the Twenty-ninth Street entrance. More 
women — but not the woman. Just ahead of 
him, however, he thought he saw a familiar 
form. He doubled his pace. The Form turned 
down Fifth Avenue. De Peyster hurried after 
it in most undignified fashion. At length he 
overtook it. It was Hers. He luffed up along- 
side and spoke her. 

*' Lovely day!" 

She did not look at him. He repeated his 
observation. She answered sternly, without 
looking : 

"I'll call a policeman, sir, if you molest me." 

"Oh, I say, Miss Collis, have you forgotten 
me so soon .^" 

"Why, it's— it's— Mr.— " She had forgot- 
ten his name, but she put out her hand. 

He gave her his hand and his name as he lifted 
his hat. 

"Where are you going, my pretty maid .^" 

"Going a-shopping, sir, she sayed." 



(Betting IRounb 



25 



"May I go with you, my pretty maid?" 

"A shopgirl might steal you, sir, she sayed." 

The antiplional service was getting beyond 
him. He broke off, "But what about your 
steamer?" 

"I sent my trunks to the dock by an express- 
man, for, as I told you yesterday, even if I miss 
the steamer, I've simply 
got to buy some — some 
things." 

They strode along to- 
gether. He liked her 
because she took long 
steps and he need not 
mince to keep pace 
with her. 

"Take a little of this 
New York air with 
you," said De Peyster. 
" You'll get nothing 

like it in Paris. And take along a few yards of 
this cerulean sky — our own exclusive make." 

She expanded her athletic chest and said, " The 
air does taste good!" 

He went on: "I remember that when I went 
to Italy I set up a howl, 'Where's that marvel- 
ous Italian sky I've always read about ?' ' Right 
over your head,' I was told, * and a particularly 
fine one this morning, too.' But I answered, 
' Why, New York can beat that on a rainy day !' 
And when William Archer came over from Lon- 




THEY MEET AGAIN 



26 tbe IReal mew l^orh 

don to inspect us, he said the air was like old 
sherry with flecks of gold in it. It's a fact, this 
city has the most beautiful sky in all the world — 
and the finest climate, bar a week or two of 
Hades in summer and a few days of Green- 
land's icv in winter." 

"It's a little windy to-day," said Miss Collis, 
who was hanging on to her skirts with one half- 
paralyzed hand. 

"Wait till we come to the Flatiron Building!" 
he said. "There it is, dead ahead of us. Isn't 
it a beauty ? Some people say it is hideous, but 
I think it's as perfect, in its way, as the Par- 
thenon." 

"Sacrilege!" cried the art student. 

"What's the Parthenon but a very beautiful 
shed, built like a wooden barn, only with marble 
beams and gables and with statuary instead of 
circus posters pasted on it ? The Flatiron is like 
a glorious white ship. See ! 'It starts, it moves, 
it seems to feel the thrill of life along its keel!' 
And how wonderfully it dresses up the vista! 
After we lost the Dewey arch, because Dewey 
gave away the house they gave him, I don't 
know how we ever used to get along without 
the Flatiron. You ought to see a side view; it's 
not so pretty, but very striking." 

With malice prepense he led her round Madison 
Square, so that she could cross directly in front 
of the bows of the skyscraper — or "cloud scratch- 
er" (Wolkenkratzer) , as the Germans call it. 



(Bettino IRoimb 



27 



As they 
a p p r oach- 
e d , she 
noted little 
groups of 
men stand- 
ing in knots 
at lee-cor- 
ners. 

"What 
are those 
men watch- 
mg ? 

"They're 
art students 
and CO n- 
noisseurs, 
he said; 
"though 
some of 




them, I think, 
must be dry- 
goods men, 
waiting to learn 
the newest styles 
in hosiery." 

The wind was 
a zesty breeze 
elsewhere, but it 
was a gale 

r o u n d this 
building, whose 
owners were 
once actually 
sued for raising 
such a wind as 
kept smashing 
in the plate glass 
of nearby shops. 



THE FLATIRON ON A WINDY DAY 



28 Zhc 1Rcal mcw) ^ovk 

"Look at that hat!" cried De Peyster. And 
Miss Collis saw a tiny derby soaring like a kite 
as high as the eighteenth or twentieth story of 
the building. Other hats and newspapers were 
dancing here and there at the height of a church 
steeple. But Miss Collis had little time to watch 
these aeronautics, for she had troubles of her 
own. She must tuck her chin into her breast 
to keep her hat from joining the others and tak- 
ing her hair with it. Indeed, she must bend al- 
most double to walk at all, and De Peyster had 
to take her arm to keep the wind from driving 
her under the wheels of passing cars and cabs. 
As for her skirts, though she clung to them with 
both hands, they snapped and swirled about her 
like a flag in a tempest. She was buffeted into 
other women, who were trying vainly to keep 
down appearances ; the skirts of some were actu- 
ally blown over their heads. 

But they rounded the dangerous point in 
safety, and in the lee of the building Miss Collis 
paused to rearrange her hair and put to her com- 
panion the momentous question: 

"Is my hat on straight .f^" 

"It's just right," he answered, with flattery 
pouring out of his eyes. Then he added: "By 
the way, you are now standing on historic 
ground. This is the point of which some wise 
man said — even before the Flatiron day — ' More 
beautiful women pass this spot in one hour than 
pass any other spot in the world in twenty- 



ecttlwQ 1Roun& 29 

four.' And now that you are passing it, the 
proverb is forever proved." 

She paused awhile to watch the parade. It 
was, indeed, an Olympic sight, a march-past of 
goddesses, demi-goddesses, nymphs and dryads, 
with a few specimens of ordinary human femi- 
ninity thrown in, and a neghgible quantity of 
mere man. 

" Compared with these queens and princesses," 
said De Peyster, *'the English women along Re- 
gent Street are awkward and badly dressed 
frumps, the waddlers along the Unter den Lin- 
den are cattle and the women of Italy 
are only large-eyed cows. The beauties of 
France used to rival ours, and even the 
medinettes of Paris are well gowned, but so 
are our shopgirls, and New York is now 
supreme." 

Here, in a thick current, the daughters of lib- 
erty and commercial democracy moved in an 
overwhelming array of beauty. Those who were 
too poor to wear gorgeous raiment could at least 
wear frocks well fitted. Those whom nature had 
not dowered with the grace of form appealed to 
art to conceal the defects. And almost all car- 
ried themselves with that easy hauteur that dis- 
tinguishes the New York woman. They made 
no hypocrisy of meekness, but marched along 
alluringly, emphasizing their physical graces by 
their carriage and gathering their skirts about 
them with a frankness astounding to the for- 



30 Zbc 1Real mew l^orK 

eigner, inspiring to the sculptor and bewildering 
to the plain, prim citizen. 

'Tor the last few years," said De Peyster, 
"the costumes of women have been wonderfully 
beautiful. They always seemed fascinating to 
me, whatever the style, but they have seemed 
particularly artistic of recent years." 

"That's because we're staying close to na- 
ture," said the art student from San Francisco. 
"We always used to have to wear some mon- 
strosity. If it wasn't hoop-skirts, it was a bustle; 
if it wasn't barrel corsets, it was balloon sleeves. 
Now the women's costumes follow the lines of 
the form." 

"I should say they do!" said De Peyster. 
"Look at that stunner." 

One of those big, Juno-like New Yorkesses 
was passing. Her great hat was a tour de force 
of beauty; her hair was daringly handled in line 
and mass; her copious furs did not smother her 
gracile curves; her walk was defiant yet inviting. 
She was followed by two long, slender, aris- 
tocratic Gibson girls, and these by a bevy 
of Christy creations, Wenzell women, Gilbert 
graces. Clay dingers, Hutt houris, x\spell allur- 
ers, Smedley smilers, Stanlaws stunners, Crosby 
creations and all the other types that have made 
fame for artists and trouble for mankind. 

It was almost impossible to find one woman 
who had not some especial attractiveness of face, 
form, garb or carriage. The average was amaz- 



(Bcttino IRounb 31 

ingly high, and those who were better than the 
average were so ravishingly fair that one could 
imagine himself a grand vizier at an Orien- 
tal slave- mart, or the conqueror of a great city 
reviewing the spoils of war. 

The reason for this wealth of beauty has been 
perhaps best sought in the mixed blood of the 
Americans; this mingling of races not only seems 
to redound to vivacity of mind and charm of 
mien, but it brings about an unending variety 
of feature, complexion and personality that for- 
bids a New York street scene any of that cloying 
monotony of type that marks the other boule- 
vards of the world. But, whatever the explana- 
tion, certain it is that no man ever stood and 
watched this thronging embarrassment of beauty 
who could not sympathize with De Peyster when 
at length he sighed deeply and said, ''Come 
away! Men have been known to go mad from 
lingering here too long. This is the rock of the 
ten thousand Loreleis." 

They moved on down the stream of woman- 
kind. As they started to enter one of the big 
department stores. Miss Collis looked at the 
clock and gasped: 

"My steamer! I'll hardly have time to make 
it. But I must buy those — those things." 

"I'll come help you," said De Peyster. 

"No, you won't!" she answered, grimly. 
"You'll wait here at the door." 

"You'd better check me; you might lose me." 



32 Zbc IReal mcvo l^orft 

"No such luck," she answered, but she soft- 
ened the words with a smile. 

The swinging doors shut her from view, and 
De Peyster stood in the vestibule, feeling like a 
fool among so many women. Then he began 
to be almost afraid, although the battalions of 
charging Amazons paid no more heed to him 
than to one another. They stepped on his toes, 
hit him in the eye with their bundles, walked 
into him, glared at him — all without a word of 
regret. 

He held the door for half a dozen, but, as none 
of them acknowledged his existence or even 
looked a "Thank you," he let the rest bunt 
through as best they could and rejoiced at every 
one of those rudenesses that only bargain-hunt- 
resses can inflict. 

This department store was like all the others 
in every large city of either continent, for Lon- 
don has its Whiteley's and Paris its Magazin du 
Louvre. But the New York shopgirl is perhaps 
distinguished above her fellows in other places 
by her contempt for shoppers. She has had a 
Laura Jean Libbeyral education, and knows that 
all haughty sliopgirls marry millionaires. The 
New York salesgirls have had beauty contests 
in the journals, and one newspaper published 
a novel, each instalment of which was written 
by a saleslady — or at least the paper made this 
claim. And when you see it in a newspa])er, 
it's so-so. 




THE CZAR OF THE DEPARTMENT STORE 



(Betting IRounb 33 

Poor Miss Coll is was in a frantic hurry, and 
with good cause; but, as everyone else showed 
equal frenzy, the shopgirl was not moved. At 
last, Miss Collis exclaimed, appealingly: 

" Would you please wait on me ? I've got to 
catch a steamer." 

The sales-duchess only leered at her, shifted 
her gum to the starboard side and went on in a 
languid drawl to the cashgirl, who leaned down 
like a blessed damozel from her shrine while 
cash-boxes waited unheeded and distant cus- 
tomers were perishing with tedium. The shop- 
girl's conversation flowed on in a mellifluous 
stream : 

" Well, zize sayn, betchersweet life Idallow no 
ladifren to come between himman I. So, wen- 
neesez tumee, 'Ahgwan, Mag!' sezzee, *whadjer 
givinmi ?' I upsansez, ' Umabe a swell floor- 
w^alker,' s'l, 'butcherno gent,' s'l." 

" Onnesdidju .^" exclaimed the cashlady. 

*'Hopmadyfydiddn," and with a toss of her 
regal head she carefully manicured her nails, 
while eleven frantic shoppers gnashed their teeth. 
"Nizez — no, madam, we're all out of those — I 
haven't one left." There were half a dozen of 
Them in front of her, but she must finish lier 
story. "Nisez — funny how some people butts 
into a conv'sation, eh, Carrie.^ — Nisez " 

Miss Collis, by dint of ruthless football tac- 
tics, elbowed to the coiniter, picked out what 
she wanted and said, with vitriolic tone: 



34 ^be IReal IRevo IPorh 

"How much are these?" 

"Nisez " 

"And I say, how much are these ?" 

There was murder in her eyes. The shop- 
girl gave her a scornful glance, sneered the price 
and turned away. 

"I'll take them," said Miss Collis, fiercely. 
"My change, please; I'm in a hurry." 

A long delay ensued in making out a dupli- 
cate bill, handing the money to the cashgirl, 
who took the things dreamily and after a while 
tied them up, made change with the speed of a 
lotos-eater and slowly handed them to the sales- 
lady. Miss Collis grabbed them and fled, while 
the countess of the counter went blandly on: 

"Nisez to him " 

In other departments Miss Collis had the same 
experiences. By the time she had finished her 
purchases, the Recording Angel had writer's 
cramp putting down her mental expressions. 
When at last she reached the door, she was a 
bundle of nerves. She carried several other 
bundles. Poor De Pevster was almost a worse 
wreck; he was so ashamed of himself for being 
a mere man and being caught in such a mael- 
strom of harpies that he even volunteered to 
carry the bundles. In a New York man this is 
a sign of mad devotion or incipient softening of 
the brain. 

"You'll never catch that boat," he said, an- 
grily. He was so mad at himself and her that 



(Betting IRounJ) 



35 



he almost added, "I'm sorry to say." They 
were both so distracted with ra^^e that they took 
the escalator up to the Elevated station. Witli 
characteristic American hurry, they walked up 
the moving stairway. They found themselves, of 
course, on the wrong platform, and were forced to 
cross the street. De Peyster was so befuddled with 
bundles that he led her across Twenty-third 
Street instead of Sixth Avenue, and they climbed 
only to find themselves again on the same plat- 
form. 

He called himself a special 

kind of fool, and both felt 

better. They descended 

again, and at last reached the 

right station, just in time to 

have the gates slammed in 

their faces by a triumphant 

2: u a r d . The next train 

seemed a long while arriving 

at their starting point and a 

longer while reaching their 

destination. Then they ran. 

They reached the pier, just 

in time to expel their last breath in a sigli. The 

steamer was already out in midstream. The 

people on the dock had even ceased to wave 

their handkerchiefs at nobody in particular 

and yell "Bong voyazh" at everybody in 

general. 

"My ticket is good for the next boat," Miss 




"cash!" 



36 Cbe IReal IRcw l^orft 

Collis moaned, disconsolately. *'But it doesn't 
go for a week." 

"Will you wait here on the pier for it.?" said 
De Peyster, weakly, from among his bundles. 
She withered him with a look and said that he 
might take her back to her hotel. 

He cast a farewell glance down the river and 
exclaimed: "By Jove! there's a steamer coming 
in. It's the Cedric, and my old friend Calverly 
— the Honorable John Calverly — is aboard her: 
younger son of the peerage and all that sort of 
thing. Let's find your trunks and send them 
back to your hotel with these bundles, and we'll 
go watch the Cedric come in. She's one of the 
biggest passenger steamers in the world. And 
maybe Calverly and I can cheer you up, Miss 
CoUis, while you wait for your next steamer." 

"This is all rather informal," she hesitated. 

" Nonsense ! A bachelor girl like you can take 
care of herself in New York for a week, if she's 
going alone to Paris for a year." 

What was there to fear.? Who was to know 
of her bohemianism ? She flung conventional- 
ity aside and said: 

"All right, come along." 

The huge steamer came slowly and gingerly 
up the river, trying to keep from stepping on 
any of the mob of tugs. The decks were 
crowded with voyagers rejoicing to see the land 
again. The rapture cf passing Sandy Hook, 
that welcome beacon which says, "The dangers 



(Bcttino IRount) 37 

of tlie sea are ended," the exultation of tlie 
cruise up the noble Bay to the Narrows, with 
its two fortresses whose grim engines are hidden 
behind peaceful green lawns, and then into the 
harbor of broad waters, the quaint little cheese- 
box of the Revolution-time fort on Governor's 
Island, tlie strangeness of the mountain-cluster 
of tall buildings at tlie lower peak of New Yorl: 
— a sight radically strange to their Old-World- 
weary eyes — all these had raised the passengers 
to a state of almost hysterical joy. Homesick- 
ness was finished, patriotism took a sudden leap. 
The delay at Quarantine and the formalities of 
perjury before the customs officer had only 
whetted their excitement. 

As the leviathan was slowly and groaningly 
persuaded into the slip by the snub-nosed sharks 
of tugs, the people on the dock were picking out 
their friends and exchanging trite welcomes and 
silly jokes in loud, childish voices. 

De Peyster was a long while making out Cal- 
verly ; then he waved frantically at him and called 
him by name. Calverly alone seemed to be ut- 
terly indifferent to the excitement of landing; 
indeed, he looked rather bored, and even when 
he recognized De Peyster he simply flapped his 
hand, grinned wearily and gurgled: 

"Helloelloello!" 

Then he disappeared from the rail. 

"What will he think of me .^" said Miss 
Collis. 



38 ^be IReal IHew l!)ork 

"That's true. I'll tell him you're my cousin 
— if you don't mind." 

"But aren't we getting along rather fast.^" 
asked Miss CoUis. 

"Oh, that's all right. We've only a week 
ahead of us, and we must make the most of our 
short honeymoon." 

"Well, I like that!" she exclaimed. 

"Good for you; so do I." 

The gangplank was aboard now, and the 
passengers, like driven sheep, came catapulting 
down it into the arms of friends and relatives. 
One fat man slipped at the top and came down 
with all fours in air. 

"Good slide! Keep your base!" sang out a 
voice in umpire tones. It was A. J. Joyce, the 
Chicagoan. He was with "Ananias" Blake, to 
whom he said, cvnicallv, "So that's an ocean 
liner! Why, it isn't so terrible much bigger than 
one of our Great Lake steamers." 

There were the usual meetings of fond souls 
whom an ocean had divided. Here was one who 
rushed into the arms of bad news; another who 
had left London a rich man and found in New 
York that he was a pauper, the stock market 
having taken a day off. Here were prim people 
who kissed like game-cocks trying for each 
other's wattles; here were young lovers who 
made no secret of long, lingering osculation. 
Here was a callow youth who greeted his fond 
parent with, " Gad, it's a good thing you met 



(Bcttlno IRoimb 



39 



me, Guv'nor: I haven't even carfare; came up 
another companionway to escape tipping the 
library steward." 

''Poker in the smoker?" 

"Well — er — a little; there was a professional 
gambler on board, you know." 

Here was a wo- 
nian who cried out 
lovingly to her long- 
lost husband: "Did 
you bring me that 
pearl necklace and 
those fifty pairs of 
gloves .^" and the 
greeting which this 
Ulysses bestowed on 
his Penelope was, 
"Hush, idiot!— the 
customs officers!" 

Last of all Cal- 
verly ambled down 
and gave De Peys- 
ter a fishy eye and a fishy fin. 

"Do you know, it's awf'ly good of you to 
come; it is really," he moaned. 

De Peyster said: "May I present you to 
Miss Collis — my cousin .^" 

The Chicagoan was preparing to edge in, but 
when he heard the word "cousin" he looked 
askance at Blake and fell back, murmuring: 

"Cousins already! This is no place for us." 




THE WHITE MAN S BURDEN 



40 XLbc IRcal IRcw l^ork 

Calverly was impatient for the fray. He said : 
"Come along, old chap! Where shall I have 
my luggage sent? Any decent 'otels in this vil- 
age.'' 

The English have not yet Anglicized hotel; 
they still spell it with a circumflex, and say 
''speciality" — a pronunciation reserved for our 
illiterates. 

"We have the best and the w^orst hotels in 
the world," said De Peyster. "But your lug- 
gage hasn't been inspected." 

" But 1 say, old man, I swore to a lot of lingo 
on the steamer; didn't mention a few things, 
but — but nobody does, you know." 

"That doesn't make any difference. They'll 
have to see for themselves." 

" Won't take a gentleman's word, eh ? That's 
needlessly insulting, isn't it ? And it will be very 
embarrassing if they find those things I neglected, 
won't it .^" 

"It's a custom of the country." 

Calverly looked suspiciously at De Peyster, 
pondered a moment, then haw-hawed with start- 
ling abruptness. 

"Rather good, old fel! Custom of the coun- 
try— ' custom' ! 1 see that. Really! You Yan- 
kees have such a sense of humor! They told 
me I'd no sooner land than you'd begin spring- 
ing w'eezes on me. But I understood the first 
one, didn't I ? Oh, I'll get on!" 

Calverly grew sober as he saw his boxes pried 



(Betting 1Roun& 



41 



open and tlie contents rutlilessly ransacked. 
His amateurish smugij^ling was soon discovered, 
and he paid handsomely for the *' oversight." 
To many of the women passengers the scene was 
more embarrassing, and articles that are rarely 
sliown except in front of the Flatiron Building 
were exposed by the lialf-dozen. Some of the 
women were brought to the edge of tears by this 
medieval system of border hold-up. How much 
the fear of detection had to do with the hyster- 
ics it would be as impolite to 
sav as it would be to hint that 
woman is by nature a contra- 
bandista and would rather 
smuggle than eat. 

Calverly had been so long in 
getting an inspector for 
his belongings and so 
deliberate about paying 
his fine that he was the 
last to be passed. By 
this time every cab had 
)een filled. It would 
^ake time to get one by 
jelephone, so De Peys- 
ter said: 

"Better wait till you're strong enough to stand 
the shock of American cab-tariff. It's just about 
four times yours. We'll ride up on the Elevated. 
You'll get a sight of the great democracy in 
action." 




A SIDEWALK MERCHANT 



42 ^be 1Rcal 1Rcv\) l^ork 

The first train they caught was packed almost 
to suffocation, and the leisurely Calverly was for 
awaiting the next. 

"Anyone could tell you're no New Yorker," 
said De Peyster. " In the New Yorker's lexicon 
there's no such word as 'Next train.'" 

He led the way; De Peyster had played left 
tackle at Columbia, and Calverly had been on 
the Rugby team; so, with Miss Collis between 
them, they reached the inside of the car. 

"This is worse than our Tuppenny Tube," 
said Calverly. "Deucedly good-natured crowd, 
though. I must have bent in three or four ribs, 
but nobody complained. Heads would be broken 
in England." 

Someone rose and offered Miss Collis a seat, 
wdiich she took with a smile of recognition. It 
was the Rev. Mr. Granger, of Terre Haute. 
With him was Peter Simes, the sweet songster of 
South Carolina. 

"It is easv to see that he's no New Yorker," 
said De Peyster. 

" How can you tell ? He wears the usual num- 
ber of limbs and clothes." 

"Yes, but he got up to give a woman a 
seat." 

De Peyster and Calverly were swinging by 
straps — those poor substitutes for the convenient 
tails which Evolution lopped off long before she 
invented modern transit. The Elevated train 
was packed as only New York cars can be 



(Betting IRounb 43 

packed. Tlie people who had seats were pinned 
together till their very iliums ached. The mix- 
ture was such a triumph of democracy as made 
the English aristocrat shudder, while Mr. Simes 
looked with such horror at the presence of Ethi- 
opians in any but a Jim Crow car that almost 
involuntarily his hand went to his hip-pocket. 

Here was a well-known millionaire, usually 
represented in the cartoons by a costume checked 
w^ith dollar marks. He had not had the time 
to ride uptown in his automobile. He w^as plas- 
tered against an Italian laborer who so loved 
his native soil that he carried his share of it with 
him. Between him and a profusely built negro 
washerwoman w^as squashed an exquisitely beau- 
tiful and perfectly gowned young woman, who 
might have been the daughter of the millionaire 
— or his stenographer. Touching on and apper- 
taining to the negress was an elegantly attired 
personage, whose black face and shiny eye were 
the only refutation of his aristocracy. Smudged 
against him was a messenger boy trying to peer 
through the elbows that hemmed him in and 
learn what happened when the Demon of the 
Gulch reached for his old trusty, and, finding 
that it was gone, faced with un})lanching cour- 
age the band of painted redskins, so many of 
whom he had taught to bite the dust. Next to 
him was a stockbroker equally absorbed in 
another work of fiction, an evening paper, which 
had already sunk each of the Russian ships nine 



44 trbc IRcal 1Rcw l^ork 

times and captured Port Artliur on eleven dis- 
tinct occasions. Next to the broker was a row 
of immigrants who had made themselves con- 
spicuous by getting on early with half a dozen 
large and microby-looking bundles. 

Every seat was taken at least once and a half. 
Of the aisles you could only say that there was 
still room at the top. The car was a great bas- 
ket of eels, and men, women and half-smoth- 
ered children were so packed, melted and poured 
round each other tliat it would have been out- 
rageously indecent if decency were anything but 
a matter of custom. (How would you, madam, 
like to find yourself suddenly on Fifth Avenue 
in that bathing suit you wore between prayer 
meetings at Ocean Grove last summer.?) 

It w^as a wise passenger that knew his own 
feet in that mass of scrambled legs. If a man 
wished to unfold his newspaper, he brushed the 
glasses off his neighbor's nose; total strangers 
were rubbing noses like engaged Esquimaux, and 
unintroduced couples were simply wrapped up 
in each other. 

x4s for the platforms, they were worse yet, for 
there the passengers were pressed, not against 
the human form divine, but against the iron 
railino:s. Eventuallv these will be made of rub- 
ber ropes, but for the present they are unyield- 
ing, and with every new passenger that pushes 
in someone sjets a rib twisted or a thorax con- 
caved. This is why New Yorkers wear that 



(Bettincj 1Roun& ^s 

anxious look, which is sometimes attributed to 
business rush. The Elevated train platform is 
the daily disproof of a silly axiom to the effect 
that two bodies cannot occupy the same space 
at the same time. Tlie revised axiom is this: 
There is always room on the train platform for 
as many more people as there are waiting on 
the station platform. 

The so-called "guard" stands a-straddle the 
coupling pins between cars, and before long he 
gets his elbows so pinioned to his sides that he 
can hardlv work the convenient levers of the 
gates, and he asks someone with a free arm — 
if such there be — to pull the bell-rope for him. 
New Yorkers often feel sorry for the trainmen 
and wonder, '' Who shall guard the guards .?" As 
for the passengers — they can take care of them- 
selves. And they deserve all they get, for in the 
mad struggle to get aboard the first train, and in 
the deep-seated horror of having to wait ten sec- 
onds for another train, everybody hangs on by 
the skin of his teeth or the tip of his nails and 
postpones breathing till he gets home. Then, 
when some woman gets scraped off a train and 
run over and her body is distributed along the 
track or drops to the street below, everybody 
blames the railroad and the so-called guard is 
arrested! Everybody swears at the transit sys- 
tem and goes on fighting his way into the next 
train. 

And everybody, young, old, lame, halt or blind. 



46 Zhc IReal IRew l^orft 

reads for dear life, and mostly evening papers 
which proclaim with scare-heads in one edition 
what they deny with small type in the next. The 
universal custom of reading in this joggling 
lio-ht is what makes New York the oculist's 
paradise and the Mecca of the journalists. 
Then, too, the newspaper is very useful to those 
men who have a lingering sense of shame ; they 
can hide behind it when they see a woman 
standing reproachfully before them — this also 
is why newspapers are never printed on sheets 
of convenient size for reading; they are not 
meant for literature, but for concealment. 

"You must see some very startling sights 
from the Elevated," said Calverly, "riding 
along past people's bedroom windows like 
this." 

"No," said De Peyster, sadly, "the 'El' is 
one of the greatest disappointments of New 
York. I've watched the windows go by ever 
since I was a boy; I've always hoped to be 
shocked, and I'm always nearly shocked, but 
I've never actually had the pleasure of being 
really shocked. A lot of women hang out of 
the windows — the hanging women of Babylon — 
and you always hope they'll fall, but they never 
do, though they must grow — well, calloused on 
their elbows. Now and then you see some wo- 
men putting up their hair, or families eating 
dinner in their shirt sleeves, and Sundays most 
of the men seem to spend at the windows in 



(Betting IRounb 



47 



said 



OIIKER 



their underclotlies; but there's nothing very en- 
tertaining about that." 

"Must be terrible Hving by the 'El," 
Miss Collis. 

"You'd think so, but there are 
so many people who love the noise 
and the excitement of having 
something always doing that the 
rents along the ' El ' are as high as 
anywhere else. Some of the apart- 
ments that look right into the 
trains rent for five or six thousand 
dollars a year." 

"I suppose," she said, "they'll 
be fitting up apartments next in 
the basements, where people can 
watch the Subway trains go by." 

"Stranger things have happened in New 
York." 

"But they really ought to take better care of 
the traffic," said Calverly. "We'd never stand 
such crowding in London." 

"It's hard to have a large town without having 
a lot of people," said De Peyster. "London 
is a big circle of villages; the traffic can go in 
all directions. New York is a long, slim lead 
pencil, and almost all the lines have to run 
north or south. Everybody goes downtown in the 
morning. Everybody goes uptown in the even- 
ing — except Saturday, when there is this early 
afternoon rush that we have struck. The 




48 ^be 1Real IRcw )^ov1x 

problem will never be solved till New York goes 
into a decline and moss grows on the asphalt." 

"I dare say I could solve it some way," said 
Calverly. 

"Pity you have been so long in getting here," 
smiled De Peyster, indulgently. "Several very 
intelligent men have been lying awake nights for 
several years, and the problem grows faster than 
the ideas." 

"I have been reading some statistics," said a 
voice. De Peyster and Calverly turned. It was 
A. J. Joyce, who had stood by unobserved. He 
read from a clipping he had taken from his 
pocket. 

" This paper says that, last year, the combined 
street railway lines of New York carried twice as 
many people as all the steam railways of the 
United States together. The Elevated carried, 
in one day last April, 917,060 passengers, the 
surface lines, on May 9th, over 1,700,000. The 
Interborough carried 246,587,022 passengers in 
1903, an increase of 31,000,000 over 1902." 

The Chicagoan looked up, expecting to see 
the two men swooning. 

"You have a penchant for statistics," said De 
Peyster, coldly. 

"Well, I can't say I have exactly a ponchon, 
but I have a leaning that way. They call me 
'St'istics' at home," said Joyce. 



„^« „^^v»™»,^.4W»M™'»»~«i»>»il<«(«l^^^ >" "^ijS'VsjV* 




AT THE CUSTOM HOUSE 



Chapter III 

THE BEAU MONDE THE WALDORF; A REVOLVING DOOR 

PEACOCK ROW THE PEOPLE IN THE CORRIDORS — ^THE 

BALL-ROOMS AND DINING-ROOMS OSCAR THE UNI- 
VERSITY club; its dining-room the LYCEUM THEA- 
TRE A NEW YORK AUDIENCE SUPPER AT THE SAVOY 

A MIDNIGHT SPIN THROUGH CENTRAL PARK RIVERSIDE 

DRIVE AND MORNINGSIDE PARK UNDER THE STARS 



^ ^ T SAY, 'Pie" -Calverly loved to call the 
X proud American by the name of the 
humiliating national dish — "I say, Pie, where 
are you taking me, anyway ? This is the deuce 
of a distance, isn't it rather?" 

"Thought we'd try the Waldorf-Astoria," said 
De Peyster. 

*'The Waldorf-Astoria, as the fellow said in 
the song, eh?" said Joyce, playfully punching 
De Peyster in the ribs. 

De Peyster, like the usual native of New York, 
abhorred a Chicagoan; but he loathed a rib- 
poker. So he gave Joyce a jolt with his own 
elbow that knocked all his breath out. But 
Joyce imagined that the cataclysm was simply 
due to an ordinary rush for the door, so he 
thought nothing of it; for just then the guard's 
voice came in faintly : 

"Toity-thordStriV." 

'' Whatever did the brute sav ?" asked Calverly. 
4 



50 Zbc IRcal mew ^ovh 

" Thirty-third Street," said De Peyster. '' We 
get out here." 

De Peyster was wondering how to take care 
of both the San Franciscan and the Londoner. 
But Miss CoHis said she had never seen the 
Waldorf-Astoria, and toddled along. 

Calverly stared up at the enormous double 
hotel, which resembles nothing so much as a 
huge iceberg of gingerbread — what Lewis Carroll 
would have called a "gingerberg" — mouse- 
nibbled here and there at the top. 

"Big enough to hold the whole population," 
said Calverly. 

"Probably not a room left," said De Peyster. 
They went under the iron canopy, which, at 
night, with its spatter of electric lights, is a little 
Milky Way. They slid into a rapidly revolving 
door, where everyone enters between the spokes 
and where Calverly, crowding in with De Peys- 
ter, walked all over his heels and got himself 
bumped from abaft with annoying familiarity. 

As the trio gathered themselves together on 
the safe side of the propeller screws, a human 
being was projected into their midst (as the New 
York Sun would not say), and they heard the 
siren voice of the Chicagoan. 

"Whenever I go into one of those machines," 
he said, "I expect to come out a sausage." 

"Naturally," observed De Peyster, in an 
extra dry tone, as he led his flock away. 

"I wonder if he meant anything by that," 



Z\K ffieau fll^on^c ^i 

said the Chicagoau to his friend, "Ananias," 
who answered: 

" What a New Yorker says never means any- 
thing; or, if it does, forget it. Let's have a 
drink." 

He steered the Chicagoan into the big cafe 
where there were tall-hatted men enough to give 
the scene an English look. Blake consented to 
repeated experiments in the irrigation problem, 
but, when he perceived the waiter menacing with 
the check, he saw, or said he saw, an important 
interviewer and rushed away, returning when 
he observed that the Chicagoan had paid the 
bill. 

"Say," said Joyce, "when he gave me the 
bill I thought it was a mortgage on the hotel. 
I feel as if I'd had one of my wisdom teeth 
pulled. I tell you there's a large, vacant chair 
in my pocketbook." 

But Blake insinuatingly led his victim to the 
cigar-stand, where Joyce slid up and down try- 
ing to discover something at about six for a quar- 
ter — just to show that he was not yet bankrupt. 
He finally bought six for a quarter — apiece. He 
staggered out, saying to Blake, "I'd like to take 
a long breath of this air. D'you suppose I can 
afford it.^ Will a policeman hand me a bill 

for it r 

"You've got your pocketbook left, haven't 
vou ? You don't know when you're luckv," said 
Blake, leading him away to other conspiracies 



52 



^be IRcal IRew l^ork 



for the divorce of the old partnership of Mr. 
Fool and Miss Money. 

Meanwhile, De Peyster and his twain had 
sauntered down the lobby of Russian and Italian 
marbles, with its decorations by C. Y. Turner. 
This corridor, called *' Peacock Alley," was mot- 




THE WALDORF-ASTORIA CAFE 



ley with people, of whom you could only say 
that they all seemed to have money and to handle 
it with a careful carelessness. Here were opu- 
lent Westerners with the ore still clinging to 
their gold; here were evident outsiders who had 
drifted in with a wild sense of extravagance, and 
who looked as if they were expected to put a 
gold dollar in a slot at every step. Pages were 
flitting about, murmuring the numbers of rooms 
or the names of guests who had been called for. 

"Is this New York society.?" asked Calverly, 
raonocling the crowd. 

"Not much of it," objected De Peyster. "It's 



Z\K Beau fiDonbc 53 

like New York's bohemia. A lot of commer- 
cial men take their cloak mmlels to a cheap res- 
taurant, drink and eat cheap things from un- 
clean linen and glass and look at one another in 
wonderment, and everybody says of everybody 
else in mutual admiration, 'Those are the bo- 
hemians!' So it is in this place; a good many 
of the people are Western parvenus. They sit 
round and stare at one another, savinc:, ' Those 
are the Four Hundred.' x\s Oliver Herford said, 
this hotel was built for the purpose of * purvey- 
ing exclusiveness to the masses.' Of course, 
there are always some of the real people here; 
but they are few to begin with and they don't 
usually look the part. New York society people 
are like those of every other metropolis; they're 
quiet, simple, usually plain and stupid, rather 
tired of their money and rather cautious of it 
from force of habit and a fear of looking osten- 
tatious. 

"You'll see a lot of notables here, however. 
The Congressmen from Washington have made 
this their headquarters for their little jaunts, and 
the politicians follow the statesmen. The 'Amen 
Corner' of the former ' Easv Boss,' Senator Tom 
Piatt, is at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, but it'i5 losing 
some of its power. The Waldorf is very gay 
when foreign dignitaries come to this country, 
for they usually stop here. Li Hung Chang's 
yellow silk dragon flag fluttered from the hotel 
when he was here in state, and he had a body- 



54 ^be IRcal mew ^ov\\ 

guard from the town's crack cavalry, Squadron 
A. Prince Henry of Germany flung out his 
black eagle here, too. The hotel is, perhaps, 
all told, the greatest in the world, but its fame 
brings the mob, and almost anybody is as likely 
to be nobody as somebody." 

They went to the desk, a long parabola with 
a large corps of clerks, who, with indefatigable 
cheerfulness, answer the most idiotic questions 
and pass the inquirer down the line. There is 
a separate group of clerks for every need, and 
a separate desk where waiting cards are shot 
through snappy pneumatic tubes to all the six- 
teen floors, whence they are carried by the pages 
of each floor to any of the hotel's one thousand 
rooms. The hotel accommodates about one 
thousand four hundred people and employs 
about one thousand four hundred servants to 
keep them happy. Besides its guest rooms it has 
forty public rooms. The royal suites rent for 
$500 a day, and the payment of $100 to $150 a 
day for a suite is not uncommon. 

As De Peyster feared, there was not a room 
to be had. He started to leave, but, noting that 
Miss Collis, while trying to act as if she had 
known the place from infancy, was really de- 
vouring the scene, suggested they should look 
round a bit before leaving. He obtained per- 
mission to visit the grand ball-room from a clerk 
who called him by name and possessed a mirac- 
ulous, directory-like memory that would have 



Z\K Beau flI>on&c ^5 

made a President of any hand-shaking poli- 
tician. 

The grand ball-room is more imposing for its 
size and splendor than for any artistic influence. 
It has its own series of anterooms and stairways 
to the double tier of boxes. The ceiling, by 
Edwin H. Blashfield, has a soft radiance of its 
own; but the score of ovals by Will H. Low do 
not reveal him at his best; the figures repre- 
sentino; the nations are all of them academic in 
pose and color, save, perhaps, Ireland. 

"Here they've had some gorgeous balls; and 
this room and the grand ball-room at Sherry's 
divide the glory of the town. It was at Sherry's 
that one horsey man gave a dinner not long ago 
to his hunt club, with every guest seated on a 
horse, while he ate. Talk about your crazy 
pastimes of Roman emperors! They have big 
banquets in these ball-rooms, too, and the women 
sit in the boxes. They have to endure the sight 
of the men busily eating and drinking, and then 
they must keep awake while after-dinner speak- 
ers administer their conversational bromides. 
They have lectures here, too, and concerts and 
amateur theatricals, such as the Strollers' annual 
show, which lasted a week and had an English 
duke in the cast. And college fraternities have 
banquets here and make the hotel rock with the 
yells of rival chapters." 

From the grand ball-room the trio went to the 
Colonial dining-room and then to the Myrtle 



56 iTbc IRcal mew l^orh 

Room used for weddings and wedding-break- 
fasts, though Delmonico gets most of these. The 
Astor gallery, however, is the jewel of the hotel; 
it is used for small dances, lectures and the like; 
it is a snowy replica of the Soubise ball-room in 
Paris, save for the twelve panels of Edward Sim- 
mons, who has furnished the town with many of 
its best mural triumphs, but was never happier 
than in the ecstatic spirit of these seasons and 
months — rapturously beautiful women who live 
in a heaven of color. These and Robert Blum's 
beatific masterpieces on the walls of Mendels- 
sohn Hall are an honor to the country. 

The three visitors leaned on the marble railing 
and gazed down into the palm room, where there 
was a pretty al fresco effect. Miss CoUis sighed : 

"Those people seem to be eating some aw- 
fully nice things. Yum-yum!" 

Calverlv said: 

t/ 

"I say. Pie, isn't it about tea time.?" 

"If the customs officers had seen that you 
brought the tea habit in with you, they'd have 
confiscated it. Do you really want tea.?" 

"Rathurr!" said Calverlv, with emphasis. 

"Come along, then. First we'll take a peep 
in the large dining-room. It's a little cold, or 
we could take tea on the roof." 

As they stood in the doorway of the long and 
lofty dining-room, a substantially built person of 
evident importance nodded to De Peyster and 
called him by name. 



Z\K Beau flDonbe ^7 

"Who's that great man?" said Miss Collis. 
"That's Oscar, the major-domo," said De 
Peyster, in an awestrnck voice. "And to be rec- 
ognized by him is considered one of the highest 
honors a New Yorker can aspire to." 

Then they sought a table under a sheltering 
palm. Calverly ordered tea with minute and 
threatening directions. Miss Collis hesitated. 
De Peyster said: 

"I am going to have a Scotch highball. You 
can have one, too, in a tea-cup; though many 
of the women, as you see, are drinking theirs 
openly." 

"Shocking!" said Miss Collis. 
"Aristocratic women smoke in the hotel cor- 
ridors at English watering-places," said De 
Peyster. 

"Oh, come, now. Pie!" said Calverly. 
"I've seen it," said De Peyster, firmly; "and 
so have you. iVnd look here, Calverly, if you 
don't quit calling me Pie, I'll call you Calf. 
What shall we do to-night ? Shall we dine to- 
gether somewhere.^" 

Miss Collis shook her head sweetly. 
"Then we must all go to the theatre some- 
where." 

"I have no chaperon," she said. 
"Nonsense! you don't need one," sniffed De 
Peyster. 

"I have no chaperon," she repeated, and her 
quiet pride took on such an angelic look that 



58 



Zbc IRcal mew IPork 



De Peyster, after staring her through and 
through, cast off certain liopes he had cherished 
of a swift flirtation, and said: 

"I know a woman who will be glad to go 
along." 

" Who is she ?" asked she, keeping her eyes 
fastened on him. 

His look fell before hers, and 
he changed his plans once more. 
When he looked up again he faced 
her with admiring eyes and said: 
"My mother." 

She breathed very deeply, 
reached over and pressed his hand. 
lie saw that her long eyelashes 
were suddenly wet. 

"I am all alone, you know," she 
said. 

Calverly was too deep in his tea 
to notice anything; he broke in 
again w^ith his native charm: 

" Where am I going to stop, I wonder ?''' 
De Peyster was staring at Miss Collis so hard 
that Calverly had to repeat his question. Then 
De Peyster came back to earth and said: 

"I'd be glad to have you come to my house." 
"Oh, I hate visiting, and I'm a terrible nui- 
sance round a house." 

"No doubt," said De Peyster; "then I can put 
you up at one of the clubs for two weeks and at 
another for the next fortnight, and so on." 




A NEW YORKER 



(Ibc J6cau fIDonbc ^^ 

Tliis was acceptable, and they agreed that 
they woukl all go to the theatre together. De 
Pevster called a cab, and they went first to Miss 
Collis's hotel. De Peyster helped her out, and 
as they stood at the door she said : 

''We'd better call the theatre idea off. I'm 
only in the way." 

"In the way of being the most charming — " 
De Peyster began. 

"None of that," she smiled. "But you see 
there'll be a terrible contretemps. You told Mr. 
Calverly I was your cousin. He'll surely blurt 
it out to your mother." 

"He's sure to," said De Peyster, puzzled. 
Then he brightened. "I have a sister who's a 
true sport. I'll tell her the whole story, and 
she'll like you immensely, and she'll talk Cal- 
verly to death, while I listen to you." 

So they shook hands and parted for the nonce. 

The two men drove up to the University Club. 
The granite castle, with its decoration of the 
carved shields of all the larger colleges, impressed 
the Englishman greatly. The central hall, with 
its superb columns, and the pomp of the vast 
reading-room overwhelmed him. The swift up- 
ward shoot of the elevator almost floored him, 
and the rich furnishings of his own room took 
his breath away. 

"I shall be no end comfy here," he said. 
While he dressed for dinner, De Peyster was 
away for home and his own toilet. The pros- 



00 ^be IRcal IRcw l^ork 

pect of going to the theatre with the Englishman 
silenced any protests the yonnger Miss De Peyster 
might have made against the mysterious Miss 
Collis, and her brother hurried back to dine 
with Calverly. 

As they entered the lofty-ceiled dining-room 
of the club, with its almost musical harmony of 
sumptuous woodwork and soft tapestries, Cal- 
verly stared like a yokel. 

"By Jove, there's not a palace in Europe with 
as fine a dining-room as this. It's simply su- 
pebb, you know; simply supebb." 

After a dinner that even an English bulldog 
could not growl over, they found the De Peyster 
automobile aw^aiting them. They picked up Miss 
De Peyster and then scudded to the hotel for 
Miss Collis. When she appeared Miss De Peys- 
ter reached out of the dark of the carriage and 
called her ''My dear cousin" in a way that 
ended formality. 

And so to the New Lyceum Theatre. Here 
Miss Collis broke into open raptures as she 
looked up and saw along the cornice a row of 
great braziers, from which floated clouds of 
steam, lighted up by unseen incandescent globes 
till the vapor seemed like sacrificial flames burn- 
ing frankincense to the muses of the drama. 

Calverly complained that the audience looked 
only half-dressed with none of the women in 
decollete, until IVIiss De Peyster reminded him 
that England is the only European country where 



Z\K Beau flDon5c 



61 



women shiver in bare skin and sealskin at the 

theatre. 

The })lay was Barrie's snbtle weft of faneiful 
comedy and realistic tragedy, ''The Admiral)le 
Crichton," with William Gillette as the butler 
who was a king in a midocean island and a 
hopeless menial in democratic P^ngland. Calverly 
had seen the play in London 
with a native cast. lie could 
not help saying: 

"Crichton on the island re- 
minds me of — what's his name 
— Kino: Oscar of the Wal- 
dorf." 

After the theatre they drove 
to the Savoy and took supper 
under the low but gorgeous ceil- 
ing of its dining-room. The 
problem of w^hat to eat pro- 
voked Calverly to grumble: 

" Why don't they serve a table 
d'hote supper, as they do in London at the 
Carlton .^" 

"Because we come nearer being civilized 
here," said Miss De Peyster. "I'll never for- 
get the first time I saw an English mob of 
after-theatre gourmands tackle a regular supper 
served in courses! I can still see that scrawny 
old decollete dowager taking hot soup — at that 

hour!" 

"Another thing," said De Peyster; "we're not 




MATCHES MARY 



62 z\K IReal new ^ov\\ 

treated like children here. They don't scold 
us and send us to bed at half-past twelve, as they 
do in England. Think of the way they begin 
turning the lights out on you in London before 
you've half-started to eat!" 

Calverly decided to get off the dangerous sub- 
ject of international argument. He said: 

** What kind of a bird is terrapin, and who is 
this man Maryland it's named after .^" 

After they had over-eaten sufficiently, as they 
stepped out of the Savoy the night was so starry 
and so mild and the Plaza lay so fair before their 
eyes, with its three giant hotels, that sleep seemed 
a waste of life. To their right stretched the 
black forest of Central Park. De Peyster 
proposed a midnight excursion, and all 
agreed. 

The automobile dashed past the splendid and 
moving statue of General Sherman, a special life 
seeming to imbue the golden forward urge of 
rider and horse, and of the Victory, their scout. 
Through the velvet gloom of the tree-bordered 
drives they swept, every curve opening some new 
vista of dream. 

''It's a little late to see the grand army of 
spooners," said De Peyster. " At an earlier hour 
every bench has its loving couple, hugging and 
whispering for dear life. It's a great place for 
love-making. This Park is a masterpiece of 
landscape gardening, too. It was the lifework 
of Frederick Law Olmstead, and Tammany paid 



^bc Beau nl^on^c 63 

for it. That's why New York forgives Tam- 
iiiaiiy so inueh. Central Park is as different 
from Hyde Park or Regent's Park or the Bois 
de 13oulogne as day from night. They are fiat 
and barren compared with tlie ups and downs 
and the countless graceful shapes of this place. 
Fortunately, it's too dark for you to see the 
statues. Some of them are the worst on 
earth." 

*'AYhat would you Americans do without 
superlatives ?'' said Calverly, wearily. 

"We'd have nothing to live for," said De 
Peyster. "We are always after the biggest 
things going, and when we haven't them, we 
claim them anyway." 

The automobile swept out of the Park at Sev- 
enty-second Street and crossed to Riverside 
Drive. Here the miglity Hudson burst upon 
their view, and the long avenue, now almost 
deserted, was filled with silence and epic poetry. 
The houses along one side were all of ambitious 
architecture, and, in the dark, they made a rich 
white wall three miles long. The other side was 
all trees and terraces down to the river banks. 
Across the wide floor of the Hudson, glistening 
with eddies and streaked currents, the Palisades 
reared their dim heights and led the eye into a 
distance of majestic beauty. 

The marble tower of the Soldiers and Sailors' 
Monument rose in ghostly white, and seemed 
a smaller prelude to Grant's Monument. This 



64 



Zhc IRcal IRcw J^orft 



big tomb lost much of its rigidity in the en- 
velopment of night, and its succession of 
square Doric base, circle of Ionic columns 
and pyramidal dome lifted the soul to an exal- 
tation. 

''Just opposite this tomb," said Miss De Peys- 
ter, tenderly, "is the little grave 
of an ' amiable child,' a poor little 
boy five years old, who died in 
1797. The grave has not been ^ 
disturbed, and it seems less lonely %^ 
now lying so close to General 
Grant and his wife." 

After a long and silent in- 
breathing of the loftiness of the 
scene. Miss CoUis murmured: 

"It is more beautiful even than 
the Golden Gate." 

This is a San Fran- 
ciscan's last tribute. 

Now De Peyster 
ordered the chauffeur 
to turn into Morning- 
side Heights. From 

the parapet they looked no longer on the calm 
of the Hudson, but on the checkerboard of 
city squares outlined in chains of light. Even 
the serpentine trestle of the Elevated road 
had a grace in this half-day, and the massive 
arch of the unfinished Cathedral of St. John the 
Divine rose in a solemn, gray rainbow of stone. 




THE KANGAROO WALK 




i; ' 







Zlbe Beau fIDonbc 65 

There was an awesome uplift in thus contem- 
plating the sleeping city from its acropolis under 
a black crystal globe of sky; it moved even 
Calverly to say: 

"I'll have to borrow some of your superla- 
tives. I've knocked about the globe a bit, but 
I've never seen in all the world so — so — well, so 
godlike a promenade for mortals as this ride 
through Central Park and Riverside Drive and 
Morningside Heights. The drive about the hills 
of Florence overlooking the Arno is very fine, 
but it is tame beside this." 

There was no protest from the others ; and the 
automobile went spinning down the steep incline 
of One Hundred and Tenth Street, whence it 
dived again into the deep luxuries of Central 
Park, and sped through its miles of woodland 
into that long aisle of palaces and temples, Fifth 
Avenue, where the Cathedral held up the high 
beauty of its twin frosty spires to the clear, dark 
sky, bejeweled with constellations and royal 
planet-gems. 

As he bade Miss Collis good-night De Peyster 
clung to her hand perhaps longer than was 
strictly necessary, and said: 

"May I ask what you — plan for to- 
morrow .^" 

"It's Sunday; I suppose I might go to church. 
Are there any churches in New York .?" 

" We have a few, concealed in odd points of the 
town. Mav I call for vou to-morrow ?" 



66 



^be IReal IRew l^orh 

iVll right," she said, cheerily, and he laughed: 
Good-night — cousin." 




Chapter IV 



THE GAMBLERS THE " LID " CHICAGO'S STREETS AND 

NEW York's — when the town was "wide open" — 

LIFE UNDER THE LID THE BARROOMS A FREE 

"lunch" THE PRIZE-FIGHTERS AS HOSTS THE LATE 

STEVE BRODIE GAMBLING RUNNING THE GANTLET 

— MAGNITUDE OF THE SPORT EXCHANGES AND 

BUCKET-SHOPS WOMEN AS GAMBLERS CANFIELD'S 

PALACE PLAYING THE RACES A TYPICAL POOLROOM 

A RAID A RIDE IN THE PATROL WAGON AT THE 

SIGN OF THE GREEN LAMP-POSTS 



ANEW word has passed into the lexicon of 
New Yorkers. It is years since "the 
Tenderloin" was slang, and the police captain 
who, on being assigned to that vivacious district 
about Twenty-eighth Street, thought of it as 
juicy with graft and spoke of it as "the Tender- 
loin of the city," little knew that he was creat- 
ing a classic symbol. 

The newest mintage comes from a preacher, 
the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, to whom New York has 
been indebted for so much relief from ennui. 
Speaking with despair of the city's intermittent 
fevers of political reformation and deformation, 
he said that when, on January 1st, 1904, Mayor 
Low should lead the Citizens' Union out and 
Mayor McClellan lead the Tammany Tiger in, 
"New York would be hell with the lid off." At 



68 Zhc IReal mew l^orft 

these words the truly virtuous sat back and held 
tight, while the industriously vicious plucked up 
new hope. But both were disappointed, and 
month followed month w^ith no visible lifting 
of the cover. New York saw no hell-broth at 
all, but only the lid— everywhere the lid. So 
"the lid" it is and will remain. 

Now, the Chicagoan had heard of this lid, and 
he poked fun at 131ake for living in a town with 
such kindergarten virtues. 

''Better put blue goggles on your old Statue 
of Liberty," said Joyce, contemptuously, ''and 
turn her torch into a candle; she is going up to 
bed at nine o'clock with her hair in curl-papers. 
Now, Chicago is no nursery; it may be wicked, 
but we all recite 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To- 
^'night!' and citizens who stay out after dark 
don't get spanked." 

"No," said Blake; *'they get sandbagged. If 
I were from Chicago, I wouldn't insist on drag- 
ging the condition of her streets after dark into 
the conversation, any more than I'd speak of 
smoke if I came from Pittsbui'g, or mosquitos 
if I had escaped from Paterson, N. J. But when 
you talk of New York as being childishly virtu- 
ous, you are indulging in flattery. 

"Did you ever see an old, dead log lying all 
quiet in the grass without a sign of life, and then 
did you ever lift it up and see the squirming 
vermin and the riotous times that had been go- 
ing on all the while ? There may be a lid on 



ilbc (Batnblcre 



69 



New York; but under the lid — well, there's some- 
thing doing. The lid's a good idea, too; there's 
no reason why we sliould have vice parading 
with a brass band and red lights. We don't 
want the thugs to make the streets dangerous, 
as they do in Chicago, and we don't want the 
women to turn Broadway into a toll-road, as the 
London women have done with Piccadillv. 
We've been through all that. 

"A few years ago I saw things in this town 
that would turn the stomach 
of a later Roman emperor: 
dives opening right on the 
street, with little wicker doors 
that children could look under 
and see the dancing and sing- 
ino' and rowdv talk and be- 
havior of old harridans and 
young girls recruited to the 
trade by the 'cadets.' That's 
what the town runs to when 
the lid is off, or, as we used 
to say, when she is ' wide open.' 

"You'll find thousands of well-behaved men 
who say that the lid ought to stay off, because 
the smell of the stew brings people from all over 
the country — people who spend money right and 
left, people like you, who flock here just to see 
something worse than the tame, old, everyday 
vices of your home industries. New York is like 
Paris and Old Dog Tray in suffering from the 




ANANIAS BLAKE 



70 Zhc IRcal mew J^oik 

quality of its friends. In the lowest resorts of 
Paris nearly all the visitors speak English or 
American ; then they go away and roast the city 
for the evil that is concocted almost wholly for 
foreign consumption. 

"But there is no danger of this town simmer- 
ing down to 'yarb tea,' lid or no lid; although 
it is just as well not to let the odor and the gleam 
out into the open air to excite the curiosity of 
children and well-meaning grown-ups. Under 
the lid there's still a hot time in the old town 
every night, and the visitor can find almost any- 
thing to suit his idiosyncrasy, provided he can 
get an introduction of some kind. And the in- 
troduction is easily managed, if you can only 
show that you are not a policeman or a detective. 
So long as your intentions are truly dishonest 
the entree is easily found to almost any part of 
the world, from demi down to four below zero." 

The two men were drifting about town. It 
was Saturday afternoon, and Blake had a little 
leisure. He was one of those who believe that 
a "barroom education" is a necessary post- 
graduate course to any schooling. The Chi- 
cagoan confessed a fondness for the same alma 
mater. The first place Joyce asked to be led 
up to was, of course, the Hoffman House bar, 
long famous throughout the country for its high 
prices and the high flavor of the paintings on its 
walls. Nudes like these would mean nothing at 
the Metropolitan Art Gallery, but here they are 



Zbc 6ainblcr6 7i 

sinister. A few vears back it was a rare comic 
paper tliat omitted some variant on the story 
of the farmer who was told that the cause of the 
costliness of the Hoffman House liquids was the 
costliness of the oil paintings on the side. He 
came in the next time wearing a horse's blinders. 

All the large hotels have their bars, some of 
them a mere chaos of frippery, others works of 
decorative art showing unity of design and often 
a historic or artistic value. The Hotel Im- 
perial has a finely painted old Knickerbocker 
bowling scene. At some of these places a free 
lunch is served of surprising quality. Judging 
by the prices for the same things in the restau- 
rant of the same hotel, the profit is hard to 
understand. You pay ten cents for a glass of 
beer and you tip the waiter ten cents. For his 
ten cents the waiter brings you a napkin, a fifty- 
cent slice of roast beef, twenty-five cents' worth 
of potatoes, ten cents' worth of beets, five cents' 
worth of bread and ten cents' worth of cheese. 
The proprietor and the waiter get the same re- 
turn, but out of his ten cents the proprietor pays 
the waiter's wages, the cost of the beer, the food, 
the breakages, the rent, the furniture, the linen, 
the laundry and the insurance. 

After zigzagging more or less faithfully down 
the line, the Chicagoan felt impelled to call on 
the eminent barkeepers who are reformed prize- 
fighters. John L. Sullivan once swung his 
shingle on Sixth Avenue, and it seemed to square 



72 z\K IRcal IRcw IDorh 

off at that of Corbett a few blocks lower. But 
both bars are closed now, though "Kid " McCoy 
and Thomas Sharkey and Ernest Roeber, the 
wrestler, still receive guests at certain glittering 
palaces. 

Steve Brodie, too, is gone, though his famous 
place on the Bowery still flourishes. The New 
York Su7i claimed Mr. Brodie did not make 
the famous dive from the Brooklyn Bridge, as 
he claimed; but it seems that a man would be 
likely to remember whether or not he actually 
took such a step. In any case, a number of 
others have made the distance with more or less 
fatal results, and Brodie found thousands to 
believe his claim. From being a bootblack he 
marched, via the dime museum, to glory as a 
saloon-keeper, a lender of umbrellas to poor 
women on rainy days, an owner of real estate in 
New York, and finally a star in a play w^here. 
on every night of the week and twice on Satur- 
days, he dived off Brooklyn Bridge into the mat- 
tress — I mean the dark waters far below and 
rescued the kidnapped heiress who had been 
thrown over by the villain in evening dress. 
Brodie's saloon is covered, ceiling as well as 
walls, with old prints of old kings of the ring — 
a genuinely fine gallery of heroes. 

But Joyce grew tired of inspecting the bar- 
rooms. His soul, no 'onger parched, now panted 
for excitement. 

"Is there any place," he asked, "where a true 



Z\K <5ainblcr6 73 

sport can put a little bet on a horse or take his 
chances with a wheel ? Does this town support 
any games of chance except trying to cross the 
street-car tracks? Or have the police got the 
whole fraternity scared ?" 

Blake grinned pityingly, and answered: 
"Why, it's the police that make gambling 
worth while in New York. Who enjoys the cir- 
cus most— the boy who asks his father for a 
quarter, gets it and walks in at the main en- 
trance, or the boy who crawls under the tent 
and runs the risk of being hit by a peg-driver's 
mallet on the outside or of finding himself under 
the elephant's feet on the nside ? 

"Out in Chicago, at Monte Carlo and other 
places, you walk into the spider's parlor like a 
nice little fly. In New York the actual betting 
is the least part of the fun. Getting inside is 
the whole game. It's like storming an old-time 
castle. There's a moat and a portcullis and a 
postern gate and iron bars and bolts on every 
gambling place in New York. Then the police 
may pay an informal call at any minute, and 
they use everything but a Gatling gun to get in- 
side. We Americans laughed at the Paris police 
some years ago when a few Jew-baiting editors 
fortified their printing shop and defied the 
authorities for a few days. But New York has 
places that are prepared with heavy iron doors, 
guarded windows and sentinels, and have held 
out for months. The police, knowing that 



Zhc IRcal IHcw l^ork 



gambling was being done, have been unable to 
collect that positive evidence which a court of 
justice requires. 

"Sometimes the police try to scare away the 
customers. They back a 
patrol wagon up in front of the 
place and ring the gong; or 
they station uniformed men 
there to warn visitors off. But 
it doesn't work. 

"The police exhaust every 
means to get into these places, 
so as to catch the gamblers 
actually at play. They have 
detectives go out of town, come 
back, live at a fashionable 
hotel, spend money freely till 
they attract the attention of 
some * runner' for a gambling house and are 
approached as victims. Once inside the detect- 
ive gambles and loses till he learns where the 
layout would be hidden in time of raid and 
everything else that is necessary. Then he re- 
turns another time with other detectives, whom 
he introduces as his friends, and they yell ' Hands 
up!' at the proper moment. One of the detect- 
ives recently lost $400 at gambling before he 
got enough evidence. Another managed to get 
hold of a pass-key. 

"Sentinels and patrols guard all the ap- 
proaches to these buildings. Others stay near 




THE PRETZEL PEDLER 



police lieadquarters, and a general alarm goes 
out every time the patrol wagon stirs. 

'* Sometimes the proprietor is desperate and 
meets force with force. One man, Tom O'Brien, 
on West Thirty-sixth Street, drew a chalk mark 
on his stoo]) and dared the plain-clothes men to 
cross the dead line. He threatened to have the 
police arrested as burglars. 

" ' Is there any gambling in New York ?' you 
ask. Why, there's almost nothing else. Every 
incoming steamer has its smoking-room filled 
with men who have seen scarcely a wave since 
they left the other side and neither know nor 
care how near they are to this side, except as 
they make up their pools on the day's run. 
Every train, speeding along some spoke toward 
the hub of New York, has its little game. The 
commuters cutting across the Jei'sey meadows 
play cards in the smoking-car, and little social 
clubs shuffle and deal through the tunnel to the 
Grand Central Station on their way to business. 
One train from Philadelphia carries a special 
club car. 

''At lunch time all over town the office clerks 
skimp their midday meal to steal into a pool- 
room to bet on a horse race taking place in New 
Orleans, or they hang over a stock ticker and 
wonder whv the marerin is ahvavs on the other 
side of the sheet. 

"In the afternoon it is billiards or pool, for 
money or drinks. After dinner, to the club, 



7<> Zhc IRcal IHcw ll)ork 

where a man loses his identity under a green 
e} eshade ; where conversation becomes a lost art ; 
daybreak is the finish; the ceiling the limit; and 
the man who says more than 'I have openers,' 
or 'A little sweetening for the Kitty,' or 'That's 
good !' is voted a gabbler. What money the wife 
has won playing bridge all day the husband loses 
playing poker all night. 

" The great Stock Exchange is only a big gam- 
bling hell, somewhat more sumptuously quar- 
tered than the smaller hells. Then there is the 
limbo of 'the Curb,' where the speculator's office 
is the space between his umbrella and his rub- 
bers. They tell of a pickpocket who collected 
nine watches on his way downtown, passed 
along the Curb and found he was shy six chro- 
nometers. x\ll New York is sprinkled with 
branch offices of the recognized brokers and the 
bucket-shops of the unelect. There is usually 
a special department for the 'business women.' 
They have no semblance to the willows that 
bend and murmur over the streams where Huy- 
ler's ice-cream soda flows. These women do 
not talk of clothes, nor of their neighbors. Their 
speech is of this sort: 

'"Hello, Kate! I heard you got squeezed in 
cotton.' 

'"No; the trouble with me was, I was long 
on Consolidated Gas.' " 

There are numberless other forms of gam- 
bling and numerous other, exchanges, hand- 



^bc ^amblcre 



77 



somely li o ii s e d , 
such as the Prod- 
uce, the Mercan- 
tile,- the Coffee, 
Cotton, Maritime, 
Metals, 
Coal 
a n d 
1 r o n , 
Real 
Est ate. 
Build- 
ing Ma- 
t e r i a 1 
and 
Horse 
Exchanges. In 
all of them 
some actual 
business is done; 
it is the cake of 
soap from which 
the speculators' 
bubbles are 
blown. The chief 
V o lume 
of trade 
is the 
g a m - 
bling in 
f u t ures 




A GAMBLER IX FUTURES 



with margins 
for chips. This 
big game is 
verv easily un- 
derstood and 
played; 
a man 
simply 
sells 
what he 
hasn't 
got to a 
m a n 
who 
doe sn't 
want it, 
and when the 
time comes he 
pays or col- 
lects the mar- 
m\\ of differ- 
ence between 
the p ]' i c e 
which it never 
was and the 
price which it 
is not 
(^- now. 
^-T h e 
o n 1 y 
real 



78 ^be IRcal IHcw Wov\{ 

thing about it is the money that is lost; and, as 
a new lamb is born every minute, there is always 
plenty of mint sauce. 

But these methods are, by common consent, 
called business. The word gambling is reserved 
for more definite and material games, in which 
at least the trick wheel, the brace box, the loaded 
dice and the marked cards are real, while the 
technic of the artists is beyond dispute. These 
games range from craps to Canfield's. If you 
come properly introduced you can play in the 
dingy, smelly room of a rear tenement, where 
the Ethiopian runs his policy shop and the col- 
ored sportsmen "ply the gigs," losing their 
money, but never their faith in dreams, in 
rabbits' rear feet or in chance combinations 
of numbers. Or you can, if properly intro- 
duced, revel in roulette or anything else while 
you loll in the sumptuous fauteuils of Mr. Phil 
Daly. 

The dean of the gambling faculty is Richard 
Canfield, Esquire, who receives select guests in 
a fortified castle on East Forty-fourth Street. 
You can tell it by the beautiful marble pillars. 
You may be able to get a card of introduction 
from some gentleman at your club, and if you 
once pass the strong door you will find a home 
where ino^enious sleio-ht of hand is not the onlv 
art w^ell cultivated, for the furnishings are im- 
peccable and the pictures and objects of vertu 
show masterlv connaissance* 



^bc ^ainblcre 79 

Mr. Canfield was a friend, an uiiderstander 
and a patron of the late Mr. Whistlei*. Among 
the gems he has collected of that master's art 
is a portrait of a gambler-king — himself. It was 
often publicly exhibited and admired as the '* Por- 
trait of a Gentleman," but the proposition to 
show it over its own name at the Whistler Me- 
morial Exhibit last winter excited Boston even 
more than did the two fig-leafless boys whom 
Saint-Gaudens plastered on their Library, or 
Macmonnies's tipsy and ungarmented Bacchante 
whom they banished. In fact, these three inci- 
dents have furnished Boston its only true ex- 
citement since the Tea Party. 

Mr. Canfield is a figure of national impor- 
tance, and has reached tlie dignity of being chal- 
lenged to a legal duel by the District Attorney, 
William Travers Jerome, another personage of 
New York importance. Mr. Jerome accused 
Mr. Canfield of winning no less than $450,000 
from the *' half-drunken cub" of a multi-million- 
aire. This masterpiece of haute fjiance, he said, 
was put through in a few evenings. The Dis- 
trict Attorney called on the whole State Legis- 
lature at Albany to pass a law for Mr. Can- 
field's special benefit; but Mr. Canfield, they 
say, appealed to a still higher power, the lobby. 
And at least one Senator made an almost tear- 
ful speech against any infringement of consti- 
tutional rights, as if the Constitution had been 
drawn up especially for Mr. Canfield's sake. 



80 Zhc IRcal IRcvo ^ov\\ 

There is something magnificently feudal and ba- 
ronial in a war like this, and Mr. Canfield may 
soon be found running for Congress. 

Now, "Ananias" Blake had the entree at Can- 
field's, for everyone knows that a newspaper re- 
porter can be relied on to keep a secret if he 
promises. 

So Blake took Joyce throitgh the marble pillars. 
He pointed out clubmen and social figures who 
have a national fame as Among-Those-Pres- 
ent, till Joyce felt as if he were actually getting 
into society. The splendor of the furnishings 
smote him with awe, and the dishes served by 
the chef were evidently appropriate to the bou- 
quet of the wines. Joyce had a wild desire to 
gamble, till he noticed some of the stakes. He 
admired, like Cyrano de Bergerac, the ''ges- 
ture" with which an old plutocrat tossed a bill 
of unheard-of denomination on a red or a black 
square; but it loosened his knees to see the 
croupier rake it in for the good of "the house." 
In a few minutes he felt very cold at the ex- 
tremities, and weakly asked Blake to lead him 
away and wake him up. Once outside he had 
just breath enough to use the words of the prize- 
fighter who has received a dent in his solar plexus : 

"I am hopelessly outclassed." 

Blake grinned, and said: "Can I show you 
something a little less fancy .f^" 

Joyce took courage to assent, and Blake led 
him to a restaurant on Sixth Avenue, where he 




ON THE RIALTO 



Z\)c iBamblere si 

told the proprietor tliat he had a friend who felt 
foolish. The proprietor went to the telephone 
and soon returned, saying: 

"A man will be right over to steer you up 
against it." 

Joyce felt an ominous Ides-of-March sound in 
the last three words, but he dared not withdraw. 
While they waited, Blake sermonized: 

"There are all kinds of pool games in town. 
The police pay so many calls that the handbook 
men have been kept busy. They carry their 
offices in a hat, and their exchange is any corner 
saloon that keeps a stock ticker. The hand- 
book men have gangs of 'runners,' who go to the 
offices of their regular clients, and take their bets 
and their cash. This saves the bettor time and 
trouble ; he can lose his money without other in- 
convenience. They give no higher odds than 15 
to 1, however, and the true gambler hates such 
small money. It is strange how reliable these 
handbook men are. Gamblers will cheat right 
and left, but they almost always pay their 
acknowledged debts sooner or later. This is 
both their religion and their stock in trade. 

"The regular poolrooms are of many kinds, 
and they are too many for the police, even for 
Tammany itself, and its Commissioner McAdoo, 
who is honestly trying to sit on the lid. The politi- 
cians can do better if they want to, and the pool 
men take their hats off to the district leaders. 

When Croker was in power, he once closed every 
6 



82 ^be IRcal mew lJ)oift 

poolroom in this town by simply sending word 
around. But even he could not have kept the lid 
down many days, for many of the politicians are 
interested in the poolrooms, and they say that the 
gamblers can poll at least 30,000 votes. The prof- 
its are sometimes thousands of dollars a day, and 
there are too many people in town who want to 
gamble ever to make it possible to root it out. 

"There are the poor and the rich, the women 
of the streets and the women of fashion. The 
other day a smart dressmaking establishment 
was raided, and while the women were having 
hysterics of indignation and denying with tears 
that they were interested in horseflesh, the tele- 
phone bell rang. A policeman answered and 
a far-away voice began to tell racing returns. 
There are at least twenty poolrooms for women 
all over town, and many of the men's places have 
women's rooms. 

''There is big money in the telephone pool- 
room exchange, and one man has a dozen oper- 
ators at work. Regular clients simply register 
their bets by 'phone, and get their returns, if 
any, by cheque. These places have no players, 
and the ofl^ce door calls it a 'news exchange.' 
They say that one of the men in Broad Street 
often handles over $10,000 on one race. 

"These people get their news by telegraph. 
The stakes are big, and the income from the 
poolrooms alone is often $7,000 a day. They 
used to charge $17 a day for one- wire service. 



^be (Bamblcre ss 

Recently they declared a raise to $25, and a 
commercial war followed. There are men in 
town who run from twenty-five to a hundred 
poolrooms each, and the profits sometimes run 
to $100,000 in a single day. Brooklyn and all 
the other towns about are sprinkled the same 
way. These big men have big lawyers, and 
fight the police with technicalities. Peter De 
Lacv is one of the chief of these, and owns sev- 
eral places; one of them, in Park Row, was open 
for ten years, and sometimes you'll see three 
hundred men in it at once. The man known 
as 'The Allen' was raided one hundred and 
thirteen times, but the police courts have never 
convicted him. In the first place, our police 
force could never keep all the people from 
gambling, and if they tried, they'd have no time 
for anything else." 

This was before McAdoo's assault on the root 
of the evil, the telegraph and telephone com- 
panies, when by invoking the law and arous- 
ing public opinion, he brought these big corpor- 
ations into the blaze of odium. In one day all 
the poolrooms were paralyzed as at Croker's 
nod: and then the wires were silent. And then 
they were cut and rooted out by wholesale, and 
the pool business went into the doldrums. But 
who can believe that corporations can remain 
virtuous forever, or that men will ever cease to 
cherish the folly of gambling ? 

But it was Joyce's luck to visit New York just 



84 



Zhe IReal IRcw ^ov\\ 




NEW YORK 
GAMBLER 



before the ukase silencing the wires. After 
a short wait the "runner" appeared. He was 
as handsome as a Bret Harte gambler, and, 
fortunately, his clothes were more correct than 

his grammar. After a cautious 
cross-examination, he took 
Blake and Joyce in tow. He 
started to turn down a side 
street, but seeing a policeman, 
went round the block. He 
\ - ^B^a^ ^w ^^^ them to a handsome resi- 
\ X^HBIiR dence, like any other save for 

the presence of a well-dressed 
sentinel on the sidewalk. The 
guide tipped him the wink, 
and the three mounted the 
stoop. The runner gave one long and two short 
rings, and there was some delay in gaining ad- 
mittance through the unusually handsome bronze 
doors. They were backed with steel. 

Once inside, there was a sudden change from 
the deserted outer appearance. Within, all 
was hubbub, and the confusion of many voices. 
The various rooms were dense with men and 
cigar smoke; at least a hundred people were 
there. The click of chips, the jingle of coin, the 
clatter of the ball dancing round the whirring 
roulette wheel, and the nasal sing-song of the 
masters of the revel were all shuttling through 
the buzz of voices. A brisk young man in shirt 
sleeves was chalking up on a large blackboard 



Zhc (Baniblcre s^ 

the results of horse races in various parts of the 
country, and the names of the horses, their 
jockeys and the odds were given in each race. 
The floor was httered with bits of paper like a 
stao-e after a snowstorm. An announcer was 
calling out the course of a race being run in the 
far South, and his auditors were as excited as if 
thev were in the very grandstand. Here was a 
man whose forehead was large-veined and red; 
he was acting like a jumping- jack and whisper- 
ing: 

" Come on, ' Caterpillar ' ! Come on ! I need 
the money. That's right. Bates, draw the whip 
on him. Fraud! He's pulling the race. He's 
chokin' him. Come on, damn you, come on!" 
He was trying earnestly to assist to the front a 
horse several thousand miles away in a race that 
was already run. While this individual was in- 
viting apoplexy, his elbow neighbor, who had 
nothing on this event, was calmly eating a cold 
cigar as he read a large racing sheet, covered 
with a maze of entries throughout the country, 
with the age and ** previous performances" of a 
surprisingly large population of names of famous 
jockeys and owners, the w^eights carried, the 
weather probabilities, the condition of the track, 
and the hour of the race in local and New York 
time. 

A negro was serving drinks and sandwiches. 
The ''arguer" was trying to convince a cry- 
baby sport that he had not been robbed. The 



86 Zbc IReal mew ^ovh 

''cashier" was recording bets and taking money 
from his concealment in a booth. This pool- 
room had no telegraph operator. The news 
came from upstairs by a tube. 

The runner put in the hands of Joyce and 
Blake a book. Joyce read : 

Moody and Sankey's Gospel Hymns.' 
What's this.?" 

The escort answered, solemnly: 

"If any cops butts in, dis place is a religious 
joint, see ? If youse hear anybody breakin' 
down a door, hide your chips, find page 711, 
and sing like hell. See .?" 

Joyce saw. After some dilly-dallying he got 
in at various games, but though he won a 
little at first, he always lost more and more. 
He began to take on a look of fatigue. Blake 
nodded for him to follow upstairs. On the step 
Joyce stopped him to complain: 

"There isn't a straight game in the 
place." 

Blake looked at him pityingly. 

"You want a lot for your money, don't you.? 
Well, my boy, when they learn to square the cir- 
cle, they'll be able to make a really truly honest 
gambler. Even Diogenes didn't waste oil in a 
place like this. A straight game of faro pays 
only five per cent. A gambler won't look at 
that much." 

Upstairs there were women— of the type to be 
expected in such a font. They were not all 



^bc (Bamblcre 



87 



:ii^!^(t^ 



tilde of race horses 
en the 
to d 
for new 



white. They were spending ill what was ill got. 

In one room was a telephone, and an attendant 

was repeating the cnrious names of horses, and 

then calling them down the tnbe. The last 

race at Bennings, near Washington, was just 

over. It L^^?S7ij,;:!rL:iKTrri was evident that the 

m n 1 1 i - 

had driv- 

owners 

p e ration 

titles. 

T h e 

youth 

called 

down 

tube : 

"* Diapha- 
nous' wins 

by a nostril." 

*'Megawd!'e 

nerd-to- 

'Ting-a- 

a close 

'W i d - 

and 

Shine' 

an' neck 

monev 




DI-U^HANOUS ' WINS BY A NOSTRIL" 



(Aside : 
was a hun- 
one shot !) 
Ling' come 
second . 
ow's Mite' 
'Rain or 
was neck 



for thoyd 
'Gold Cure,' the favoryte, was no- 
where. 'Many Thanks' was left at the post. 
'Useful I.ady'^ started runnin' de wrong way 
round. 'Diamonds and Foils' trun his jockey 



88 Sbe 1Rcal mew )^ov\\ 

an' fell on him. 'Clear the Arena' went to 
sleep. *Egg Nogg' and 'Buttons' " 

But they never knew what "Egg Nogg" and 
"Buttons" did, for there v/as a dull sound, as of 
a far-away Russian ship obligingly committing 
suicide on one of its own mines. The thuds 
were repeated. Their effect w^as sickening, but 
not dull. 

Upstairs and down the family was doing the 
quickest bit of house-cleaning ever seen. Rou- 
lette wheels, faro boxes, race bulletins vanished 
instantly. Blake ran downstairs to get the news. 
Joyce was petrified. Then there rose from below 
the sound of male voices trying to sing in chorus. 
The few who got the right song got the wrong 
key, and ''Shall We Gather at the River .?" warred 
in rough counterpoint with "The Ninety and 
Nine," while a third choir insisted on "Bringing 
in the Sheaves." Joyce got his book upside 
down and began to shriek with infinite feel- 
ing, "Oh, Where Is My Wandering Boy To- 
night.^" 

The women were disappearing up the fire es- 
cape, into closets, and behind chiffoniers, while 
one fat man tried to climb up an imitation fire- 
place pre-empted by a pile of sickly asbestos 
gas-logs. Joyce found himself deserted and slid 
under a divan, whence a prior tenant cordially 
but vainly tried to kick him out. As they writhed 
in combat the noise of the storming party 
drowned the wavering service of gospel praise. 



The police gave up the steel door as hopeless 
and began on the windows with all the joy of 
firemen. The crash of glass ended the music and 
the hubbub of voices was now devoted to ex- 
pressing righteous indignation at so rude an in- 
terruption of a religious gathering. The police 
did not seem to be impressed. 

Then someone turned out the lights suddenly, 
and the policemen began to play about them 
with clubs. When the lights were turned on 
again several of the policemen were found bus- 
ily pounding one another to a jelly, while the 
true criminals were crawling along the floor to 
escape. This made the officers a whit less gentle 
in their dealings. Then Joyce heard the heavy 
tread of policemen's brogans on the stairs. Sev- 
eral of the women were unearthed. They all 
protested that they were perfect ladies, and em- 
phasized the protest with a surprising command 
of masculine language. 

Joyce was so frightened that when he w^as 
yanked out from his hiding-place he hung on 
to his deadly rival, and they continued to fight 
in the very presence of the law. When they 
had been reduced to submission and bruises 
they wxre not set free, as were the other guests. 
They were taken to jail in the patrol wagon, 
along with the managers of the place and a 
motley array of gambling implements, including 
thousands of ivory chips. 

Joyce had not felt that there were so many 



90 ^be IReal IRcw J^ork 

people on earth as he saw gathered in the street 
to see the raid. But his modesty was not re- 
garded. Down the stoop and into the "hurry- 
wagon" he was hustled, and he went to his seat 
in shame. Arrived at tlie station the sergeant 
took down the "pedigree" of the others. He 
had a word of recognition and welcome for all. 
When he reached Joyce he looked surprised 
and asked his name. The Chicagoan stam- 
mered the first one that came to his blue lips : 

"G. W-w-washington." 

"Oh," smiled the sergeant: " direct descendant 
of the first President, eh.^" 
1-y-yes, sir. 

"What's the charge, officer.^" 

"Resisting the authorities." 

"Same offense as your namesake, eh.?" 

Blake hurried in now like an angel of rescue. 
He had not felt called upon to accompany Joyce 
in the patrol wagon, but he could not desert him. 
Blake, it happened, had always treated the ser- 
geant well, and a few words explaining that 
his friend was a st rancher from a small Western 
town sufficed to save Jovce from beino; held over 
for the Sunday morning court. 

Joyce felt so much relieved at his escape that 
his spirits rose materially. Blake had to go to 
his office to write up the story of the raid. He 
promised to meet Joyce at midnight. The Chi- 
cagoan ate a heavy dinner and sallied forth to 
peruse the streets and the people. 



Chapter V 



THE TENDERLOIN AT NIGHT BROADWAY AGLOW THE 

WOMEN WHO LOITER THE THEATRE CROWDS — MUSIC- 
HALLS AUTOMATIC VAUDEVILLE — HERALD SQUARE 

AT NIGHT THE " JOURNAL'S " FREE COFFEE 

EMPTYING OF THE THEATRES AFTER-THEATRE SUP- 
PERS — LATE EXTRAS THE RATHSKELLERS MORE 

TROUBLE 



BROADWAY was one long canon of light. 
Even the shops that were closed dis- 
played brilliantly illuminated windows. In some 
of them all the trickeries of electricity were em- 
ployed and rhapsodies of color glittered in every 
device or revolved in kaleidoscopes of fire. 

From most of the buildings hung great living 
letters. Some of these winked out and flashed 
up again at regular intervals. Others of them 
spelled bulletins in sentences that flared auto- 
matically. From the green and white dragon 
of Rector's to the rippling electric flag of the 
JournaVs uptown office the hunt was always for 
something new, sometliing different, something 
that caught the eye by its super-ingenuity, its 
hyper-phosphorescence among all the other radi- 
ances. 

Broadway, the most brilliant street in all the 
world, was aglow, agleam, ablaze! 



92 ^be 1Rcal IRew ^ov\\ 

The sidewalks, especially on the western side, 
were heavy with crowds flowing as thickly and 
richly as the milk-and-honey streams of Canaan. 
The lowly and the well-to-do were all in festival 
garb and humor. Here and there women of 
various stages of prosperity wandered erratically, 
ogling every detached man, yet rarely showing 
more than a passive solicitude for attention. It 
is only in the minor streets that a ''Good even- 
ing, dear," is ventured, for the police in uniform 
or in plain clothes insist on that outward respect- 
ability which is so pleasant in Paris and so odi- 
ously absent in London. Some of the willing 
sisters were somewhat tawdry, but the poorer 
members of the ancient sorory prefer the dark- 
er streets. To Broadway flock those chiefly 
of the finer ware, and the wayfarer need not 
walk far or wait long to see a dozen beauties, 
who would grace any company and who go 
gowned like duchesses adrift. 

At this hour the theatres throw open their hos- 
pitable doors and increasing crowds pour to- 
ward every threshold. The poorer classes go 
in, as a rule, through doors in side streets, and 
the throngs that enter via Broadway are of an 
opulent attire. Tong lines of carriages roll up 
and unload diamond-crowned women in royal 
ermines and white-gloved men of princely hau- 
teur, while the street cars disgorge a hardly less 
brilliant throng — for carriages are such a lux- 
ury to hire and such a bankruptcy to own in 



ITbe ircn&crloin at IRigbt 



93 




ASTRONOMY FOR FIVE CENTS 



New York, that people who would be 
reputed wealthy in other cities grow 
used to public conveyances here. The 
street cars at the theatre 
hour are consequently full 
of bareheaded beauty in 
splendid raiment. 

There is variety 
enough, heaven knows, in 
the theatres. New York 
is the capital of American 
dramatic art, such as it is, 
and the American dollar 
draws the greatest stars 

of England, France, Germany and Italy to play 
such of their native masterpieces as have not 
already been done here by iVmerican troupes. 

New York has over half a hundred theatres. 
The prices are high — fifty cents to two dollars at 
most of them. The women take off their hats and 
most of the men downstairs wear evening dress. 
The stock company idea prevails at few places, 
and the long run is preferred by most of the 
managers to Ibscene solitude. So important is 
a New York verdict to the rest of the country 
that many plays are kept on at a loss in order 
that, by this forced run, they may be accepted as 
successes on the road. First nights are social 
events, and there is a certain coterie usually to 
be found at these occasions. It is called "the 
death watch" because of its supposed coldness; 



94 trbe 1Real mew l^orft 

yet it often receives with rapture a play which 
the second-nighters will not stand. 

Among the best known theatres are Daly's, 
of eminent reputation as a home of the English 
classics; the Empire, wliich has a stock com- 
pany; the Knickerbocker (originally Abbey's); 
Wallack's, the Manhattan, Belasco's Republic, 
the New iimsterdam and the Hudson. The 
Garrick was originally the fountain of the Har- 
rigan pieces, which were not so much plays as 
delightful galleries of New York types. To light 
opera are devoted the Casino, which has become 
a proverb of musical comedy; tlie Broadway, the 
new Majestic and the Lyric. 

But Joyce felt in no mood for a serious even- 
ing. He was not even up to a musical comedy. 
Vaudeville seemed about his level. But even 
here he found discontent, for, of recent years, 
the high salaries of vaudeville theatres have 
drawn so many prominent actors from the ''le- 
gitimate," and they have been producing such 
increasingly ambitious and artistic little dramas, 
that one cannot leave his brain at home any 
longer when he goes to what our fathers called 
a variety show. 

At some of these places long four-act plays 
are produced by stock companies, and the vaude- 
ville is confined to the entr'actes. Besides, they 
have become family resorts, and their perform- 
ances are, as they say, "such as any young girl 
can take her mother to in safety." The hours 



^be ^cnbcrloin at IRiobt 9^ 

are liberal, too, and the continuous performance 
lasts from two in the afternoon to ten-thirty at 
night. iV|)pealing, as they do, to a variety of 
tastes, ranging from the weary shoppers to the 
younger children, only the most inoffensive hu- 
mor is permissible. Even at the venerable Four- 
teenth Street laughter-resort of Mr. Antonio Pas- 
tor (on whose stage Lillian Russell, May Irwin 
and many another star first effulged as casual 
nebulae) — even at "Tony's" one must come pre- 
pared to laugh at antisepticized jokes. 

But Joyce wanted to be offended. He roved 
aimlesslv from the ten-cent Comedv Theatre on 
Broadway and Sixty-sixth Street and the Circle 
on Sixtieth Street, to Ilammerstein's marble Vic- 
toria at Forty-second Street, and thence by slow 
stages to Proctor's at Twenty-eighth Street, and 
finally to Keith's on Fourteenth Street. But, 
tliough large audiences were hilarious in each 
of them, Joyce dolefully preferred to forfeit his 
admission fee, and would not stay. 

At the Dewey Theatre he found something 
nearer his needs. A troupe of so-called " Cracker- 
jack Burlesquers" were disporting as near the 
dead-line of propriety as the police allowed. The 
women were dressed to the minimum, and their 
piece de resistance celebrated a prominent na- 
tional figure in its title, "Dr. Munyon Outdone." 
Ikit it was all very tame to a man from the city 
which had the honor of being the headquarters of 
tliat late dealer in spices, Mr. Sam T. Jack. 



96 



^be IReal IRew l?ork 



Joyce grew lonelier and lonelier, and felt 
tempted to fly to the nethermost ends of the 
Bowery concert saloons or to the uttermost 
reaches of the many music-halls in One Hun- 
dred and Twenty-fifth Street. But the hour 
for meeting Blake approached. He squan- 
dered a dime on Huber's Museum, with the 
freaks on the platform and its 
still more curious actors on the 
little stage. There used to be a 
remarkable ** barker" at Hu- 
ber's. He looked like a bank- 
rupt count of the grand old 
school of pomade and wax. All 
day he wore evening dress of the 
same epoch, and he barked in 
verse in a fearful and wonderful 
manner something like this (if I 
do him injustice, may his shade 
forgive !) : 

"I^adies and gents, for only ten cents you can 
see all the sights. And there on your right is 
the great fat lady; she's a healthy baby weighing 
three hundred pounds; she's six foot around. 
Her husband is the living skeleton — see him 
shivering. The dog-faced boy will give you all 
joy, and the tattooed man does the best he can. 
The human horse is w^onderful, of course, and 
I'll show to you the boxing kangaroo. The 
lady lion tamer will please every stranger, "etc., 
etc. 




THE * BARKER 



7^\e, /'\uii^or- was av L, a - - -^-a - 







A BOWERY SOUBRETTE 



( 



Zhc Scnbcrloin at IRigbt 97 

But he passed away, like all things dear and 
delightful. He killed himself when his muse 
ceased to be appreciated. 

Joyce was lured next into the fiery palace of 
"Automatic Vaudeville" on Fourteenth Street, 
where one cent is tlie highest price for any of 
the myriad kinetoscopic, phonographic or stereo- 
scopic displays. But he tired of moving pictures 
and the twang of cylindered song worried him. 
He was disappointed to find that his lung 
power, his striking power, his grip, his height 
and weight were all far below the normal — if 
the cards the slot machines dealt him were 
correct. He took a car up Broadway. 

He could not resist the temptation to get 
down at Herald Square, that ganglion of the 
town's nervous night life. The Herald building, 
looking small for all its size, resembled an artis- 
tic jewel casket. The brood of bronze owls on 
its cornices were staring from their electric eyes, 
and the large clock, with dials like two huge eyes, 
seemed to make an owl of the building's own 
fa9ade. Above loomed the superb bronze figure 
of Minerva, who, at twelve and four, lifts an im- 
perious hand, at whose behest a cloud of steam 
comes hissing and the two bronze blacksmiths 
swing their sledges against the resounding bell. 

As if to force its popular note upon the aristo- 
cratic realm of the Herald, the Journal chooses 
this as one of the spots for issuing its free lunch 
of hot coffee and sandwiches. These are served 
7 



98 z\)c IReal mew ^ov\{ 

from a dark covered wagon to a long line of 
unfortunates; Joyce counted 192 more or less 
wretched examples of ill luck. The long queue 
coiled all the way round the statue of the im- 
known philanthropist, William Earl Dodge, 
who stares with just scorn at the hideous statue 
of Horace Greeley. The great editor sits there 
to keep the Trihime from being forgotten in the 
uptown rush of newspapers, which brought the 
Herald from far-away Ann up to Thirty-fifth 
Street, the Times from City Hall Square to its 
towering flatiron on Forty-second and will soon 
take the Journal to its future home on Fifty-ninth 
Street. 

Joyce paused in the colonnade of the Herald 
to watch through the glass sides the stereotypers 
at work making ready the columns of the next 
morning's paper and the great presses at work 
running off pink extras of the Evening Telegram 
and the last sheets of the colored Sunday supple- 
ment. The huge rolls of paper were spun 
through a labyrinth of cutters, folders and count- 
ers, and came forth newspapers ready for con- 
sumption. At the back of the building a dozen 
wagons were waiting to dash to the various rail- 
road stations with the Jersey, the Brooklyn and 
the up-State editions, which special trains would 
carry at extra speed. 

There was something intellectual about this 
wizardry that bored the restless Joyce, so he 
sauntered on up Broadway. At this hour "the 



ZTbe ^cnbcrloin at migbt 99 

Rialto,"the promenade of actors, was deserted. 
The theatres were emptying their crowds now. 
The old hullaballoo of carriage calls that once 
robbed the respectable dwellers in this region 
of their beauty-sleep has given way, as 
everything does nowadays, to a silent electric 
device that flashes numbers from a high place. 
About the Metropolitan Opera House there was 
a seemingly hopeless tangle and many carriage- 
folk were hurrying along the streets to find 
their carriages. 

The walks wxre noisy with a buzz of critical 
comment on actors, singers, plays, opera, cos- 
tumes. Here and there were people trying to 
hum and whistle a nearly catchy tune. The 
restaurants of all prices were filling, and the 
young man offered his maid whatever he could 
afford — from a simple glass of beer to silver- 
bucketed champagne; from the cheap but last- 
ing rabbit that grows in Wales to a lobster car- 
dinal selected in the pool at Rector's and taken 
thence to be broiled alive. 

Unavailingly the screaming 
newsboys flaunted at him their 
midnight extras. At about this 
hour the clock catches up w ith 5^ 
the evening papers, which 
issue their " afternoon edition" 
at 10 A.M., their "4 o'clock 
edition" at noon, their "6 
o'clock" at two, their "10 




kellnbr! 



?" 



100 Zhc IReal IRcw l^orh 

o'clock special" at six, and their "midnight 
edition" at eight. There they usually stop, un- 
less there is a prize-fight in San Francisco, when 
they send forth their loud-mouthed hucksters at 
2 A.M. with a "postscript." 

But the Sunday edition of the Morning Tele- 
graph comes out at about half-past eleven Satur- 
day night, and Joyce felt a certain devilishness 
in buying it at that hour. 

Blake met him at the appointed hour, and 
they adjourned to a rathskeller. Some astute 
New York caterer found that, while few peo- 
ple will go to a basement restaurant, great 
crowds will throng to the same place if it is 
called a rathskeller, and furnished in a pseudo- 
German style. The rathskeller, which, as you 
know, means "council-cellar," is well named, 
being the favorite resort for those who are most 
in need of good advice. In the spume of the 
beer, the froth of society finds its counterpart. 
Here the chorus girl and the woman-about-town 
meet the sporting salesman and the roue who 
is a shoe clerk by day. Gradually the more 
discreet code of foot-flirtation leads to the 
open holding of hands, and finally to em- 
braces and bibulous love-making. Also the 
choicest song rises high in collusion with the 
band. 

It had been Joyce's intention to visit the 
nightly ball at the Hay market, where the 
orofligate of both sexes meet and carouse. 



Z\K Zcn^cvloin at IWiobt 



101 



But he had imbibed so many and so various 
liquids that by tliis time his lee scuppers were 
awash. Alcohol made him more self-assertive 
than ever, and he began to explain to Blake 
that a certain extremely pretty girl was very 
ill-matched with the very 
homely youth who was 
trying vainly to quench 
her thirst for grape juice 
with malt extracts. 

" Itsh a shame to offer 
slio shweesh a lady plain 
beer," he growled. 
"And itsh very irrigat- 
ino; to me to have to 
wash him hold her lily- 
white hand like zhash. 
I feel it my sholemn 

duty to relieve her of his odioush shoshiesy. A 
true gennelman ought to always reschue beauty 
fromabeash!" 

Blake managed to keep the knight errant 
in his chair, but he could not keep the knight 
errant from winking. This seemed to please 
the lady as much as it offended her escort. 
When he observed, in an audible tone, that 
Joyce behaved like a drunken Chicagoan, 
nothing could prevent Joyce from resenting 
this "shlander on his shobriety" and the slight- 
ing allusion to his beloved city. 

In a few moments chairs and tables were 




IN THE HAYMARKET 



102 ^be IReal IHcw ^ov\\ 

flying, glass was crashing, blood and beer were 
spilling, women were screaming, waiters were 
wringing their hands and trying to conceal 
their joy. Blake was too fond of a fight to 
interfere, and the finish was a bit of living 
statuary w^ith a policeman supporting the two 
limp gladiators. 

There was no patrol wagon this time, and Joyce 
was forced to walk to the station followed by a 
blissful throng. He regretted his return to the 
same station, but he was prepared to prove his 
perfect self-possession when Blake whispered in 
his ear: 

"Pretend you're even drunker than you are. 
The police are always merciful to a sot." 

So Joyce collapsed completely before the 
desk. He was pleased to see another ser- 
geant at the blotter, and when he was asked 
his name, he murmured, thickly: 

''John Adamsh." 

" Is that so .^" said the sergeant. "This makes 
the second President arrested to-day." 

For this sergeant also Blake had done a good 
turn once upon a time. When he explained that 
his friend Mr. Adams was simply intoxicated, 
and when the other man said he had no wish 
to press his complaint of assault and battery, 
the two men were set free with a warning. 

Blake put Joyce in a hansom and told the 
driver his address. "And so," in the words 
of Mr. Pepys, "and so to bed." 



Chapter VI 

SUNDAY IN TOWN HIGH AND LOW CHURCH THE NUM- 
BERLESS CREEDS, RITUALS AND LANGUAGES IN TOWN 

FAMOUS PREACHERS CHURCH ARCHITECTURE FASH- 
IONABLE CHURCHES WALL STREET ON SUNDAY THE 

EASTER PARADE FIFTH AVENUE UPPER BROAD- 
WAY CENTRAL PARK ON SUNDAY; THE CARRIAGES 

RIVERSIDE DRIVE BY DAYLIGHT THE HUDSON A SUN- 
SET THE "diner DE luxe" AT SHERRY'S A CON- 
CERT AT CARNEGIE HALL GREAT CONDUCTORS WHO 

VISIT NEW YORK NEW YORK AS A CAPITAL OF MUSIC 

SUPPER AT THE BEAUX-ARTS 

SLEEP and the Sunday paper are the great- 
est enemies of church-going. Many of 
the preachers have provided faciUties for the 
former. But, in their search for attractions, they 
have neglected the latter. Some day, however, 
an enterprising parson will hang a file of Sun- 
day magazines in each of the pews; the only 
objection being that the rattUng of the paper 
might keep the unliterary members awake. 

De Peyster was one of those lucky dogs that 
may lie abed late week-days. So, by rights, he 
should have been up betimes Sundays. But 
Should and Would have long had a family quar- 
rel. Yet on this Sunday morning De Peyster 
was out of his bed, into his tub, inside his togs, 
around his breakfast and in front of Miss Col- 
lis's hotel at 10.45. 



104 ^be IReal IRew l^orh 

She had been up since 7.30 trying on and re- 
twisting an amazingly handsome new hat, and 
she came forth from the elevator like a spring 
dawn issuing from the caves of winter. 

"It's only about sunrise in San Francisco," 
said De Peyster, batting his eyes over the vision. 
"And I feel as if it were about daybreak here. 
Where shall we go .^" 

"What sort of church is the best.^" 

"W^ell, churches are supposed to be like the 
Kentucky idea of whisky — all good, but some 
better than others. You pays your contri- 
bution, and you takes your choice. Do you 
prefer high or low.^" 

"Church or society.?" 

"Same thing," he said, as they walked up 
Fifth Avenue. "We have all kinds — high, low, 
jack and the game. East Side, West Side, down- 
town and Harlem. The oldest in this town are 
the reformed. I like that idea of even churches 
being reformed. If this is a naughty old town, 
it isn't for lack of gospel. From Trinity to 
St. Somebody-or-Other's of the Bronx, there are 
over eleven hundred churches, and vou can hear 
sermons in almost every language since Babel. 

"You can see the ritual of the Joss House, 
the Christian Science, the Theosophical, thr 
Swedenborgian, the gorgeous Roman Catholic 
with sometimes a visiting Mexican cardinal. 
Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, 
Congregationalist, Unitarian, Lutheran, Univer- 



Sun^a? in Zornx 



105 



salist and Hebrew. There are two Quaker 
meeting-houses and a Moravian society. There's 
a Church of Strangers and a Mariners' Church 
near Chatham Square. Even the agnostics hold 
services under FeHx Adler, Ph.D. Nobody can 
complain of intolerance, eh ? 
"Then there are the Sal- 
vation Army, and the Vol- 
unteers in their barracks, 
and any number of street- C^ 
corner preachers, including 
one good man who spends 
all he collects providing 
beds for the homeless. So 

it's hard to tell vou what 

t/ 

church you want to visit." 

" Well, what preacher has 
the most fame .^" 

"Dr. Parkhurst, I pre- 
sume. He got it first by 
attacking the police. Poor, 
innocent things! they said 
there was no vice in New York, or at 
least they couldn't find it. To the police all 
things are pure. So Dr. Parkhurst went round 
and found it and told about it with lively details. 
In the course of time he became the most power- 
ful figure in New York except Richard Croker, 
now Squire Croker, of Wantage, England. 
Parkhurst gave corruption a terrible scare; he 
set on foot large investigations, and it was mainly 




A NEW YORKER 



^06 z\)c IReal IRcw l^orfe 

due to him that many a brass-buttoned partner 
of crime lost his place. 

"New York looks on reform as a good thing 
for an occasional bracer, but bad for a steady 
beverage. So the Tammany Tiger does a sort 
of 'Off again, on again, gone again, Finnegan, 
Flanagan'; and so the town finally got tired 
of Boss Parkhurst, as it tires of everybody else 
in a short time. It's the ficklest town in the 
world. Since then Dr. Parkhurst has been a 
critic instead of a captain. But you'd enjoy 
hearing him preach. He has a dry, cutting wit 
that keeps his audience — I mean congregation — 
laughing half the time. 

"His sense of humor failed him, though, re- 
cently, when he said that the Chicago Iroquois 
Theatre horror was ' God's own fire.' It sounded 
medieval, as well as in bad taste. But a few 
blocks above him, at the Collegiate Reformed 
Church, Dr. Burrell went him several better, 
for he said that the Mont Pelee disaster was a 
direct visitation of God — a second Gomorrah. 
Shows how we've changed, doesn't it.^ A few 
years ago a preacher would have been thought 
a heretic who said anything else. Now, even 
the other preachers think it heathenish to say 
such things." 

"But let's not go into theology; let's go to 
church, where we won't hear any," said Miss 
CoUis. "What other famous preachers are 
there .?" 



Suttbav^ in Zovow 107 

"There's the athletic Britisher, Dr. Rainsford, 
of St. George's, in Stuyvesant Square. He has 
Pierpont Morgan for a parishioner, but he also 
runs a workingmen's club in a big building ad- 
joining his church and has a boys' manual train- 
ing school and a company of boy infantry. Then 
there's Bishop Potter, of course, and Dr. Greer, 
now his coadjutor; the Unitarian, Rev. Robert 
Collyer, and his associate, Minot J. Savage, at 
the Church of the Messiah in East Thirty-fourth 
Street; and Dr. Richard S. Storrs, in Brooklyn; 
and there are several other preachers who get into 
the papers now and then, including Dr. Hillis 
in Brooklyn — the City of Churches. But Beech- 
er and Talmage and Dr. Houghton and John 
Hall are dead, and Cardinal Gibbons and 
Thomas Dixon and Henry van Dyke have 
moved away. There are no giants here now 
except Dr. Parkhurst, and he's tired." 

*'Tlien what churches are the most beautiful 
for architecture .^" said the art student. 

" The glorious Episcopal Cathedral of St. John 
the Divine is only begun. It will take forty or 
fifty years to finish and will cost six million dol- 
lars. They hold services in the crypt, where 
Bishop Potter officiates. But the Catholic Ca- 
thedral is a wonderfully beautiful thing. It cost 
two millions. Its cornerstone was laid in 1879, 
but it is as snowy as if it were built yesterday. 
That's our clean New York air. I can't tell you 
about the architecture technically, except that 



108 



Zbc IReal mew l^orl^ 



while it is not very large for a cathedral, it is 
considered one of the most perfect and pure and 
beautiful in the world, and its two spires are 
an everlasting inspiration. 

*'Tlie architect was eJames Renwick, who also 
designed the fascinating little masterpiece, Grace 

Church, which stands up like 
a beautiful iceberg as you 
look up Broadway. On hot 
days, it fairly cools your soul 
to see it, with its little grass 
plot and its cheerful gables. 

'* One of the most gorgeous 
churches in the country is the 
Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, 
but it's more like a theatre, 
with its light woods, its slop- 
ing floor and its dazzling col- 
ors. You ought also to see 
the Church of the Ascension, down on Fifth 
Avenue and Tenth Street, with its famous 
painting of the Ascension by John La Farge, 
who has also contributed some work to St. 
Thomas's Church. Nearby is the Old First 
Church, one of the best bits of the city's archi- 
tecture. 

"We'll take a horseback ride some morning 
through the shady bridle-paths of Central Park, 
and then you'll rave over the dome of the tem- 
ple of Beth-El with its gold ribs. It is too 
big for the body of the synagogue, but across 




A NEW YORKER 



Sun&a\> In Zovon 109 

the green trees of the Park it is an Ara- 
bian Nights' dream. The big Jewish Temple 
Emanu-El, on Forty-third Street and Fifth 
Avenue, is counted tlie finest piece of Moorish 
in the country. 

"But one of the pleasantest sights in New 
York is tlie famous Little Church Around the 
Corner, in West Twenty-ninth Street. You 
know the story of the actor, George Holland. 
When he died his friends wanted to hold the 
funeral at a fashionable church on Madison 
Avenue. But the preacher implied to Joseph 
Jefferson, who made the request, that actors 
wxre undesirable church visitors, dead or alive, 
and told him that his late friend could doubt- 
less find accommodations at 'the little church 
around the corner.' The actors have loved 
it ever since, and so have the runaway couples 
who flock there. It's a beautiful vine-covered 
nook, hardly as big as its real name — The 
Church of the Transfiguration. It has a fa- 
mous stained-glass window memorial of Harry 
Montague, the actor. 

"It would take a week to describe all the 
architectural beauties and mistakes in New 
York churches. But I think that some of the 
finest are the Christian Science churches. They 
look less like churches than like the savings 
banks, which are so well built nowadays; but 
they are very impressive as architecture." 

"I'll see them some other day. Suppose you 



iio ^be IReal IRew ^ovU 

take me to the most fashionable church," Miss 
ColHs ventured, ingenuously. 

"Ah, now you're laying off the mask. There 
spoke the true woman and the true believer. 
I was just going to take you to St. Bartholo- 
mew's, one of the swaggerest in town, though 
not very impressive, architecturally — espe- 
cially since the steeple was blown down a few 
months ago in a moderate gale. But it has 
a superb entrance. Mrs. Vanderbilt wanted 
to give it some bronze doors to rival the Astor 
doors in Trinity. She was told that they would 
be out of place with the plain entrance, so she 
said she would give a new entrance. The re- 
sult is one of the finest successes, I think, in 
the world. It is very surprising to see so much 
nudity in church decoration, but it is carved 
with splendid vigor, and the bronze work is 
not so terribly far behind Ghiberti's master- 
piece in Florence. " 

Miss Collis was again ready with a charge 
of sacrilege, but they arrived that moment 
before the church itself, and she was too deeply 
engrossed in the ensemble of arches, with their 
sheltered sculptures, the crowded line of human 
figures, the gracious columns, the elaborately 
carved doors and the outer portals with their 
rich green patina. While she paused to rhap- 
sodize, a great crowd was pouring into the 
church as a smaller crowd poured out. 

"As I feared," said De Pevster, "It's the 



Sunba^ in Zox^n m 

usual case of 'standing room only,' and there's 
no chance of a pew. I ought to have remem- 
bered that this is Easter morning. It opens 
with a pretty custom, borrowed from Magdalen 
College, at Oxford. Down in Chelsea Square 
the Easter daybreak is saluted by divinity 
students who sound trumpets north, south, 
east and west from a high tower, and then, 
sing the prelude to Palestrina's 'Victory,' and 
then the chimes rino^ in the Easter mornins:." 

He hailed a cab and they were wdiisked up to 
Fifty-third Street. 

"This is St. Thomas's Church, doubtless the 
most fashionable in New York. The most 
appallingly elaborate weddings are held here, 
and it sometimes takes a cordon of police to 
keep the uninvited women from treating the 
bride like a bargain counter." 

But here, also, the crowd was too great for 
hope. So he proposed a jaunt to Old Trinity. 
Thev walked to the Elevated station. The 
downtown train was sparsely populated, and 
the business streets it crossed wore a Sabbath 
calm. Great warehouses were locked in sleep, 
and streets that boiled with traffic all week 
were now a deserted village. They got out at 
Rector Street, and passed through the almost 
empty arcade, where, on week-days, a Gulf 
Stream flows through the covered wav, lined 
like an Oriental street with little bazaars offer- 
inoj a multitude of wares. 

o 



112 Zbc IRcal IWcw IDoi'k 

Facing them was the sliort canon of Wall 
Street, on this day as sparsely traveled as in 
the Knickerbocker days 200 years ago, when 
it ran alons^side the wooden wall that old Gov- 
ernor Stuyvesant built to keep out the English. 
Lookino: straio'ht down Wall Street, in calm 
resio:nation stands Trinitv Church, the richest 
in the country. It occupies part of what was 
once the big farm of the Dutch West India 
Company. Then it became the English king's 
farm, and was granted to his Colonial Church. 
The land that is still retained pays the church 
an annuity of half a million dollars, and enables 
it to maintain the big St. Paul's Church as a 
chapel, and Grace Church as another, to- 
gether with six other chapels, several schools, 
a hospital, a dispensary, twenty-four missions 
and a cemetery of its own. 

Trinity is like the Irishman's knife. It is 
the same Old Trinity, though it was built in 1697, 
rebuilt in 1737, burned down in the great 
fire of 1776, rebuilt in 1778, and again in 
1864. The churchyard inspires the American 
with a sense of the antiquity of our young 
country, for it has the grave of a five-year- 
old child who died in 1681. Here also are 
the graves of William Bradford, who printed 
the first New York newspaper; of iVlexander 
Hamilton, the founder of our finance; of the 
steamboat man, Robert Fulton; of Albert Gal- 
latin, General Phil Kearnv, and of " Don't- 




A BOX AT THE OPERA 



Sunba^ in Zovon 



113 



give-up-the-ship ' ' Law- 
rence. Certain vandals 
once planned to run a 
street through the church- 
yard, but a few reverent 
souls hastened to erect there the 
"Martyrs' Monument" in memory 
of the thousands of our forefathers 
who perished of starvation and dis- 
ease in the horrible prisons kept by 
the British troops during the Revo- 
lution. Once that monument was 
lifted, the desecration of the street 
project was given up. 

A curious proof of the reality of 
characters of fiction is in the grave- 
stone marked "Charlotte Temple." 
She was an English schoolgirl who 
ran away to America with a Brit- 
ish officer, who betrayed her, and 
then left her to die of a broken heart — a pitiful 
fate, relieved only by the fact that it all occurred 
solely in a popular novel of 1790, by a Mrs. 
Rowson. The fictitious tomb over the imaginary 
grave of a creature of fancy has never been dis- 
turbed since the first dreamer placed it there. 
If Verona has her Juliet's tomb, we have at 
least the grave of Charlotte Temple. 

Once, the spire of Trinity was the first visible 
bit of New York to incoming ships. Now, our 

wise men of Babel try to reach heaven by office 

8 




OF THE BROADWAY 
SQUAD 



114 Zbc IRcal IHcw ^ov\\ 

buildings, and many an elevator boy soars 
daily in his airship far above the lofty cross that 
tops this steeple. But it still holds its place 
high in the town's affection, and when its 
chimes ring in the New Year, thousands of 
merrymakers gather to hear; and the symphony 
of the horns and kazoos that gives the old year 
its wake is hushed until the brazen tongues of 
Trinity bells have given the good word that 
the new leaf has actually been turned. 

To the peacefulness of Trinity's heavy foli- 
aged lawns, the sweet Nirvana of its blissful 
dead, and the cool silence of its hospitable naves, 
many a distracted financier, broken of heart and 
hope, hurries for escape from the wolf-packs of 
Wall Street. Under the groined roof, the light 
itself takes on religion as it sweeps through the 
deep-tinged windows, and dreams over the 
white marble altar with the red shafts, its mosaic 
cross set with cameos and the reredos of ala- 
baster. 

So now a deep solemnity filled the heart of the 
fair stranger from San Francisco, and she 
knelt for a moment of adoration. De Peyster 
gazed at her with a new tenderness. "What is 
more beautiful than a girl who kneels in prayer ?'' 
he mused. He felt a sudden impulse to throw 
his arm about her and kneel by her side. 

But he shook off seriousness as something 
strange to his shoulders. When she rose again, 
he nervously told her that they could not linger. 



Sunba^ in Zovon us 

She paused once more to study the three 
elaborately modeled bronze doors, the central 
door by Carl Bitter, and the north door by 
J. Massey Rhind, showing Biblical scenes; the 
south door by Charles Niehaus, picturing in' 
hio^h relief scenes from American history. De 
Peyster explained that William Waldorf Astor 
and John Jacob Astor had given these doors at 
a cost of $40,000, and the altar and reredos at a 
cost of $100,000, as a public memorial to their 
father, who left them so many substantial re- 
membrances. 

Then they moved on to Trinity's near neigh- 
bor and pensioner, St. Paul's Chapel, built 
in 1764 and still standing, the oldest church in 
this city. It faces the west, and once its lawn 
went to the water's edge. But the water has 
receded, and hideous commercial blocks have 
crowded between. Major Andre, Lord Howe 
and George IV, when he was a middy, wor- 
shiped here, and His Excellency George W^ash- 
ington came here attended by both Houses of 
the very new Congress after his inauguration, 
and regularly afterward. His pew is still un- 
altered. In one wall is a tablet to General 
Montgomery, who perished at Quebec in that 
ill-timed assault on New Year's Eve, 1775. 
Montgomery's body, buried in Canada, was 
brought back in 1818, and his widow, who had 
bade him good-bye when he left her forty-three 
years before, sat on her piazza at historic Tarry- 



/ 



116 ^be IReal IRcw l^orh 

town, and, in her old age, saw his remains car- 
ried down the river in state, with mournful 
music and a plume-covered coffin. 

In this yard are also buried two Irish rebels 
and fugitives of "'98"— Thomas Addis Emmet 
and William J. McNevin, among the earliest to 
find a refuge in the country that has become al- 
most a new Erin. Here also is buried a famous 
actor, George Frederick Cooke, whose monu- 
ment has been three times restored, by Charles 
Kean, E. A. Sothern and Edwin Booth, since it 
was first built by Edmund Kean in 1821. There 
is an honorable old elm here, sole survivor of 
eight planted in 1766. 

De Peyster cut short Miss Collis's desire to 
tarry in precincts so full of storied memory to 
the people of the new West. He said that they 
must hasten back uptown to see the famous 
"Easter Parade." 

"The procession isn't what it once was," he 
said. "A few years ago both sides of Fifth 
Avenue were so packed with the best people in 
their best clothes that one could not move faster 
than a very slow walk. But the churches have 
been playing leapfrog over one another to get 
uptown, and now West End Avenue and upper 
Broadway divide the honors. And the weather 
is so uncertain that people are beginning to be 
more afraid of pneumonia than of appearing in 
last week's hat." 

None the less, the scene was an impressive one 



Sunba? in Zom\ ii7 

to the girl from out of town, to whom the very 
name of Fifth Avenue was a symbol of wealth 
and o:lorv. In all the windows alonej the street 
were lilies and azaleas, and it was a rare woman 
w^iose bunch of violets was less than spend- 
thriftily huge. All day Saturday the florists had 
been crowding the streets with wagon-loads of 
spring, and even stages and coaches had been 
brought into service for delivery. 

After a stroll up the crowded avenue De 
Peyster took Miss Collis to her hotel for lunch 
and a rest. But he would not relinquish her 
for long, and at four he was back, with his sister 
and Calverly, in the crested family carriage, with 
its pedigreed horses and its liveried coachman 
and footman of lofty dignity, if a trifle super- 
cilious. 

They drove to Central Park, and here was a 
second Easter review — only a cavalcade in place 
of infantry. Calverly was reminded of the Hyde 
Park splendor. 

" But your horses aren't up 
to our average," he said, "" and 
you have no coachmen with 
powdered hair and gor- 
geous garters. And I'm 
afraid some of your people 
have no right to 
their cockades and 
their crests." 

"Oh, what's the m the park 





118 ^be IReal IHcw lJ)orft 

difference?" growled De Peyster. "Anyway, 
this Park is an enormous improyenient on the 
flat and tame old roadways of yours. And you 
must admit that the stunning women we are 
passing are yastly finer to watch than your blue- 
blooded, big-boned, old aristocrats." 

** There's something in that," said Calyerly, 
"but I don't see why you limit it to the women 
we are passing. Seems to me we are taking the 
best of the lot with us." 

He looked deep into Miss De Peyster's eyes, 
quite ignoring Miss Collis. But she had her 
compensation in watching the blushing, stam- 
mering guiltiness with which he debarrassed him- 
self of the unusual compliment. 

Miss Collis tried to study the people who 
passed, but the roadways turned so often, the 
carriages flew past so swiftly and the crowd was 
so dense that she grew dizzy. De Peyster was 
forever lifting his hat and telling his sister whom 
he had recognized, but she declined to be moved 
or to watch for their friends. 

The parade was a prodigious affair, but mixed. 
For, along with the superber equipages and the 
splendor of the automobiles went the dull coaches 
of one-horse gentility, the hansoms of the busi- 
nesslike chorus girls and their indulgent admir- 
ers, the shabby hacks of those who were proud 
to have the three dollars to pay for the round, 
and the crowded public automobile stages, with 
their gaping and twisting plebeians trying to see 



Sunbav^ in Zown n^ 

everything at once for twenty-five cents. Here 
and there sputtered a few racing automobiles, 
with their fiends in workaday caps and gowns. 
The swarms of bicyclists that once filled the 
roads like a plague of locusts were reduced to a 
few old fogies or an occasional club glorying in 
its gaudy uniform. Down the soft bridle-paths 
pattered a few horsemen and horsewomen, but 
their hour is the early morning. Everywhere 
were the mounted police with their beautiful 
steeds, very gentle and affectionate till a run- 
away dashes by to endanger the lives of children 
and women. Then these horses are frenzied 
w^ith their responsibility and will run down the 
maddest equine maniac. 

There were miles of benches, not one empty. 
New York and his family were taking the airing. 
On a few meadows crowds of children were play- 
ing, though the Sabbath laws prevented the mul- 
titudinous games of baseball, football, croquet 
and lawn tennis that reign in the summer week- 
days. Nor was there a band concert, such as 
resounds through leafy aisles on summer after- 
noons. The Zoo and the Carousel w^ere packed 
with old and young, desperate after amusement 
and swinging high in air or whirling on the 
wheezy merry-go-round. The donkey-people 
and the goat-carriage-folk were driving a furious 
trade in children's pennies, and the refreshment 
stands were dispensing soda water, peanuts and 
indigestion recklessly. \ certain toll was col- 



120 ^be IReal IRew l^orft 

lected from every peanut bag by the flickering 
squirrels, the only New Yorkers who do not snub 
strangers. 

In the broad light of day Miss Collis could 
now see the ghastly population of ill-made statu- 
ary that disgraces this otherwise ideal pleasure 
paradise — Sir Walter Scott looking as if he had 
eaten too little haggis, and Robbie Burns as if 
he had eaten too much. With three or four ex- 
ceptions these works are worse than bad, and 
the exceptions are nothing wonderful, save the 
statue of Sherman at the Fifth Avenue entrance 
and the rostral column at the Eighth Avenue 
entrance presented by the Italians in memory 
of Columbus. 

In their drive they passed the beautiful vista 
of the Mall leading to the Bethesda fountain, 
the lakes with their bicycle swan boats, and 
the Reservoir, as well as ''Cleopatra's Needle," 
so-called because it is not a needle and was not 
Cleopatra's. It is a single, sixty-nine foot block 
of red syenite, weighing 443,000 pounds. It was 
quarried at Assouan in Nubia, and began its 
life with a seven-hundred mile jaunt down the 
Nile to Heliopolis, where Tehutimes (or Thoth- 
mes) III. set it up with its twin before a 
temple about a hundred and sixty centuries 
before Christ. About 13 B.C., in the time of 
Augustus, the Romans carried the two obel- 
isks to Alexandria. In 1877 one of them was 
sent to London. The Khedive then presented 



Sunba? in Zowm 



121 



the other to the United States, whose navy 
brought it across in a specially modeled ship 
at the expense of W. H. Vanderbilt. The crabs 
that support the corners are casts made in the 
Brooklyn Navy Yard from the remaining two 
Roman originals, now in the Metropolitan 
Museum. 

From the Park De Peyster directed the car- 
riage into Seventy-second Street, its broad space 




SUNDAY NIGHT AMUSEMENTS 



filled with glittering vehicles and its sides lined 
with handsome residences; thence into River- 
side Drive, which, losing the poetry of its mid- 
night mystery, reveled in unexpected daytime 
splendor, with its great walls, its terraces, all its 
magnificence, and, on the eastern side, its miles 
of proud fa9ades. For the fa9ade is about all 
the architect can show in this New York, where 
lawns are almost unknown and onlv the rich- 



122 Zbc IReal IRcw l^ork 

est of the rich can afford a side window and a 
blade of grass. 

In the day-glow the Hudson still sweeps ma- 
jestic, the Palisades loom in primeval rugged- 
ness, till they shut in the view far into the north, 
and Riverside Park remains, as at niglit, the 
noblest driveway in all the world. 

The pellucid air and the royal sky gave the 
last word of benediction and kept De Peyster 
and his guests abroad till the early evening sur- 
prised them. Calverly, who had known little of 
city sunsets save the baleful yellow or the splashy 
red of liondon, was made almost a poet as he be- 
held the ribbons of scarlet and cerise, the clouds 
of rose-madder and the furnaces of molten rubies 
glowing in a perfect blend on an apple-green 
sky, wdiile the twilight shadows softened the Pali- 
sades into ghost-mountains veiled in heliotrope. 

Then home again to dress for dinner. This 
was the Sunday night event — the diner de luxe 
at Sherry's — where the fashionables, leaving 
their homes, flock to jostle elbows round little 
candle-lit tables and feast on the ultimate lux- 
uries of table d'hotage. 

After dinner, to Carnegie Hall, founded by 
its namesake in 1890, costing over $2,000,000, 
and seating 3,000 people, as well as housing a 
theatre for amateurs in its basement, two 
smaller music-halls, many lodge-rooms, a 
restaurant and a great array of studios. 

This is the home of the New York Philhar- 



Simba^ in Zown 123 

monic Orchestra and of tlie Oratorio, the Musi- 
cal Art, and many another society. Here all 
the great yisitors of the foreign music world 
haye reyeled in their triumphs and the amazino" 
sums gathered at the box-office. Paderewski, 
Rosenthal, Ysaye, Kubelik, Sembrich, Patti, 
I^ehmann, Schumann-Heink — what famed in- 
strumentalist or yocalist that has been lured 
hither has failed to recognize Carnegie Hall as 
the Parnassus of New York music ? 

On this night, Richard Strauss, the sachem 
of liying composers, was producing for the first 
time one of his most ambitious works. Where 
he swung his baton, an array of the field-mar- 
shals of music had brandished their stayes — - 
Thomas, Seidl, Tchaikowski, Nikisch, the Dam- 
rosches, Paur and Gericke. In this yery sea- 
son the Philharmonic Society had imported a 
new conductor for each of its concerts, and the 
subscribers to the series had heard Europe's 
greatest leaders — Colonne, Weingartner, Safan- 
off , Kogel, Wood — besides the American, Victor 
Herbert. 

Combining with the smaller recitals heard in 
Mendelssohn Hall, and the world-ransacking 
galaxies that shine at the Metropolitan Opera 
House, it is undeniable that — whatsoeyer poy- 
erty it may show in creatiye music — in the per- 
formance of the best music by the best exec- 
utants, New York is the musical capital, as it 
is the commercial capital, of the world. 



124 zhc IRcal IRew ll)orK 

After the concert De Peyster and his guests 
drove for supper to the glittering Cafe des 
Beaux -Arts, where Calverly, with a French 
menu before him, felt more at home. 

But he broke out with a sudden and embar- 
rassing query : 

'*I say, now, don't cousins in America call 
each other by their Christian names?" 

De Peyster and Miss Collis looked at each 
other in terror. Both knew what he was driv- 
ing at, but neither knew the other's first name. 
After an awkward pause, De Peyster's sister 
saved the day with a gentle inspiration. 

" Not before strangers," she explained. 

"Well, I'm not strangers," protested Cal- 
verly, growing very friendly in the fumes of 
wine. De Peyster calmed him with a word, 
and excited Miss Collis with a look. 

*' After this, if you insist, we'll use the first 



name." 



Later, as he bade her good-night at the door 
of her hotel, De Peyster said, quietly : 

'*By the way. Miss Collis, what is your first 
name .^" 

'' Myrtle." 

"Mine's Gerald," said he, and he squeezed 
her hand more than cousinly long. As he 
turned away, he sang out for Calverly 's benefit: 

"Good-night, Cousin Myrtle." 

She smiled, rather than called after him: 

"Good-night, Cousin Gerald." 



Chapter VII 



ASSORTED SABBATHS — THE GOOD SIDE OF NEW YORK 

THE CROWDED CHURCHES THE FREE HOSPITALS 

ORGANIZED CHARITIES THE BOARD OF HEALTH 

BREAKFAST IN BED THE SUNDAY PAPERS THE PER- 
SONAL COLUMN AS A SECRET POST-OFFICE THE TAME- 

NESS OF A NEW YORK SUNDAY THE RAINES LAW 

THE "family entrance" HYPOCRISY AND LAZI- 
NESS QUENCHING THE THIRST SUNDAY NIGHT IN 

TOWN THE SACRED CONCERTS A SURREPTITIOUS 

PRIZE-FIGHT POLICE INTERFERENCE IN PRISON 

PROFESSIONAL BONDSMEN VICE IS EXPENSIVE 



MISS COI^LIS was too tired to be sur- 
prised at the famous way she and De 
Peyster were getting along. As she crawled 
wearily into bed she wondered how, if New York 
Sundays were so busy, the people managed to 
live through the week-days. 

And that was her Sunday in town, but the 
Rev. Mr. Granger's Sabbath was different. 

The poetical Simes felt that he was earning 
at least canonization by acting as an escort to a 
preacher — on Sunday of all days; but, by care- 
fully choosing the most fashionable churches, 
where crowds were thickest, he convinced the 
good man from Terre Haute that New York 
must be pious indeed, since it was impossible 
for all its thousand churches to house its ardent 



126 ^be IReal IRew ^ov\\ 

believers, and lie himself could find no place to 
worship. 

In the afternoon Simes took him to some of 
the missions which rich churches support in 
the poorer districts, and also showed him or de- 
scribed to him some of the magnificent hospi- 
tals, such as the Bellevue (a new Bellevue is 
planned, to cost fifteen million dollars), the New 
York, St. Luke's, the Presbyterian, St. Vincent's, 
the Roosevelt and many others, where the poor 
receive, free of charge, the benefit of the most 
J3erfectly equipped and scientifically governed 
institutions in the world, and whither the hurt 
or the sick are rushed in ambulances at any 
hour of day or night. The great Hebrew Mount 
Sinai is the latest to be completed. It has been 
called the Waldorf of hospitals. It fills an en- 
tire block at One Hundredth Street and Fifth 
Avenue, and includes ten connected buildings 
holding four hundred and eighty patients. The 
heating and ventilating apparatus alone cost 
$250,000; the air is taken from high above the 
street for purity's sake, warmed by radiators, 
filtered through cheesecloth and later expelled 
into the street as far as possible from its orig- 
inal source. Even the rooms are built with 
round corners to make cleaning easier. Each of 
the buildings has its sun parlor on the roof, and 
it is difficult to conceive any device that has 
been overlooked for the comfort and protection 
of everything but the poor microbes. 



H66ortct) Sabbatbe 



127 




A NEW YORKER 



In the evening, poet and parson strolled about 
listening to street-corner preachers and looking 
at the superb buildings of the Charity Organi- 
zation Society, with its humane 
pawnshop and its penny provi- 
dent fund; the newsboys' 
homes; the Mills Hotels, where 
decent lodgings may be had 
for almost nothing; the Uni- 
versity Settlements in the slums, 
where good men and women 
try to plant happiness among 
the unhappy; the palatial 
homes of the Societies for the 
Prevention of Cruelty to Chil- 
dren and to Animals, each with its own police, 
saving the little people from vicious parents and 
rescuing horses and dogs from brutes who starve 
or beat them. Simes told the minister of the ac- 
tivity of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, 
which, under Anthony Comstock, makes many 
mistakes, but justifies itself in keeping unspeak- 
able knaves from peddling obscenity to school 
children; of the various societies for protecting 
ignorant immigrants or trustful visitors from con- 
fidence sharks; the various homes for providing 
fallen women with an escape from the streets, or 
rescuing sailors from the clutches of the harpies of 
the wharves; the comfortable clubs and gymna- 
siums of the Young Men's and Young Women's 
Christian Associations; the Legal Aid Society, 



128 Zhc IRcal mew ^ov\{ 

which gives free counsel to the oppressed poor; 
the iVctors' Fund, with its nearby home for aged 
and forgotten favorites; the numerous protective 
associations organized by foreigners for their own 
kith and kin, such as the Fraterna Italiana, the 
Cercle Francais TAmitie, the Irish Emigrant 
Society, the Jewish Immigrants' Protective So- 
ciety, the United Hebrew Charities, the Swiss 
Home; the numberless circulating libraries, the 
manual training schools and the public baths. 

To refresh his client's fatigue, Simes took him 
to one of the owl- wagons kept by the Church 
Temperance Society, where all night the best 
possible pie and sterilized milk, surpassing cof- 
fee and well-cooked foods are sold as an offset to 
saloons. He described Nathan Straus's booths 
for dispensing sterilized milk to the poor; 
the Herald's Free Ice Fund, that carries a 
cooling touch to the Lazaruses parching in the 
hell of summer slums; the World's Sick Babies' 
Fund; Life's Farm, where tiny wretches get back 
from Stepmother Street to Mother Nature; the 
crowded steamboats that drift down the Bay 
with bands playing to mobs of poverty's own 
children; the recreation piers, with their music 
and their restful outlook on starlit waters; the 
parks that stud the tenement swamps with green 
bowers; even the societies that place boxes in all 
the stations for discarded newspapers and mag- 
azines that will entertain the poor and the sick; 
the little charity boxes in every store for the sake 




THE OLD CONEY ISLAND 



Heeortct) Sabbatbe 129 

of unprotected cliildren; the annual Thanksgiv- 
ing and Christmas feasts for thousands of the 
poor, for whose sake Salvation Army soldiers 
and Volunteers dressed as Santa Claus stand on 
frigid corners gathering coin into big kettles. 

Simes waxed eloquent on the great merciful 
institutions for the reform of the ill-begun youth, 
the care of the insane, the sick and the orphans ; 
the welcome and inspection of the steerage- 
loads of human cattle, refugees from foreign 
hardship; the scientific penology of those whose 
disease is crime — noble works to which six whole 
islands — Ellis, Ward's, Randall's, Blackwell's, 
Hart's and North Brother — are devoted. 

Enormous sums are spent every year by the 
city on its Board of Health, which coerces rent- 
racking landlords into obeying sanitary laws, 
keeps the poor vaccinated, the chimneys smoke- 
less, the streets immaculate, the incoming ships 
quarantined; keeps the children schooled and 
free from factory slavery; cleans the streets at 
enormous expense; has the Croton water supply 
analyzed every few hours and kept pure even 
at the cost of buying and burning down trouble- 
some villao-es— all for the better health and com- 
fort of the public. 

When Simes led the Rev. Mr. Granger back 
to his boarding-house, he was too much ex- 
hausted to regret that his explorations thus 
far had brouglit him no new material for his 
sermon on "The Modern Babylon Where Mam- 
9 



130 ^be IReal mew ^ov\\ 

mon Alone Is God." His head was aching with 
the attempt to comprehend the milhons on mil- 
lions poured out year after year by New York's 
high and lowly in the battle with misery, the 
crusade of sweetness and light. His heart 
ached, too, with the expansion of brother-love 
at seeing a giant's strength so consecrated to 
the labors of mercy. 

But there are as many sabbaths in every Sun- 
day as there are people alive. Mr. A. J. Joyce's 
Sunday was all his own. Easter parades, 
church services and charities were not the line 
of goods he was carrying. He slept late, and, 
just for an experiment, had his breakfast served 
in his bed. He had often heard of that Parisian 
custom, and now that he could reach the an- 
nunciator without crawling out, it pleased him 
to press the indicator at the dishes named on 
the dial. Soon a waiter came in with a tray 
loaded to the gunwales and carrying enough 
provender to keep a poor family a week. He 
set the tray on Joyce's knees and vanished. 

"They manage this eating business better in 
France," said Joyce, with a new and cosmo- 
politan joy. He decided to take his breakfast 
so every morning in spite of all Chicago. In a 
short time he had filled his bed with surprisingly 
sharp bread crumbs, his calves got a cramp and, 
as Bill Nye said, ''his feet had gone to sleep 
one by one." Then he managed to empty half 
a cup of scalding coffee into the breast pocket of 



Heeortct) Sabbatbe 



131 



his pyjamas. He drew up his knees quickly and 
the tray — well, they only charged him twenty- 
five dollars for damages. 

"After this," said Joyce, "when I try a French 
breakfast, I'll put on my raincoat and sit in 
the bathtub." 

When he was finally bathed and dressed, he 
called for all the Sunday 
papers. There were various 
important events to read up — 
especially the latest score in the 
Russo-Japanese game, and the 
latest battle between the Chi- 
cagos and the New York 
"Giants." Joyce felt lonely 
this morning. He knew almost 
no one in town except the re- 
porter. He decided that there 
ought to be some means for 
arranging meetings between 
lonely out-of-towners and con- 
genial outsiders. With a sigh 
of regret he turned to his 
papers. His eye fell on the front page of the 
Herald. He never got past that. The first 
column of the first page was marked the Personal 
Column. 

Joyce apologized to New York. Here was 
just what he was looking for, a clearing house 
for flirtations, a letter-box for those who had 
reasons for wanting the secrecy of publicity. 




"gar(^on!" 



132 ZY)C IReal IRew IPork 

Here were the advertisements with special rea- 
sons for not appearing in the crowded ordinary 
cokimns of "Furnished Rooms To liCt." And 
along with them were tempting baits for the 
gulls, offers of $20,000 profit for a $200 invest- 
ment, offers of loan without security, promises 
of immediate obesity cure, guarantees of beauty 
in six weeks, hair fertilizers proffered by bald- 
headed business men; brilliant displays and 
dazzling promises of astrologers, clairvoyants, 
palmists and other gamesters who, if they could 
do for themselves one-tenth of what they prom- 
ise to strangers, would oust Pierpont Morgan 
from his pre-eminence, make doctors useless, 
law courts unnecessary. Congress a waste of wit 
and the police force an idle ornament. Joyce 
sat in gaping admiration of the fearlessness of 
men who dared to publish, and of the beatific 
trustfulness of those who believe, such promises 
as he read here. 

"If these things are true," he mused, "they 
give the biggest dollar's worth ever known." 

But he was not interested in unveiling his 
future. The present was troublesome enough. 

He called up Blake and begged the reporter 
to take him off his own hands. Blake's consent 
came back in a still small voice; that was the 
only way Joyce ever heard a still small voice — 
over the telephone. 

Blake proposed a luncheon at Joyce's ex- 
pense. But what to do afterward was the 



aeciortcb Sabbatbe 133 

problem. They walked along the quiet streets 
where all the shops were closed except the cigar 
booths and apothecary shops with their foreign 
names, "Deutsche Apotheke" and "Pharmacie 
Fran9aise"; and where the prescription clerk 
stands ready to confound prescriptions in three 
languages. But to-day everything was a drug 
on the market, except soda water, postage 
stamps and the directory. 

Joyce grew bluer and bluer, till he matched the 
beautiful sky above. 

"I'd kind o' like to see a baseball game," he 
sio;hed. 

"Not in New York," said Blake; "we're too 
good. You can find amateurs playing in vacant 
lots, but the baseball grounds are empty. They 
are trying to break over the old blue laws, but 
it's a hard fight. You can play golf, though, on 
the public grounds at Van Cortlandt Park. 
The crowds are so big that every time you drive 
you kill a caddy, and every time you try to hole 
out you get a knockout with a golf ball back of 
the ear. There are so many fat women trying to 
reduce flesh that they constitute extra bunkers 
all over the place. And it is one of the rules 
that if you lay out the man who is ahead of 
you, you must either play from his uncon- 
scious form, or, if he is lying on top of the 
ball, you can roll him over and lose one shot. 
Accident policies do not apply to Van Cortlandt 
Park." 



134 Zhc IReal IHcw ^ov\\ 

*' Sounds a little strenuous for Sunday," said 
Joyce. 

"Well, then, there are the private golf clubs 
within a half hour's ride or more — beautiful 
Ardsley up the Hudson, Richmond Hill on 
Long Island, two or three on Staten Island and 
several in Jersey. Or you can go to one of 
the Hunt Clubs in Westchester or on Long 
Island, though they usually run Saturdays. You 
can practise polo. You can take your private 
yacht from Larchmont or New Rochelle or from 
some of the clubhouses along Riverside Drive. 
You can run down to the tall pines and taller 
prices of Lake wood. 

"In the summer everybody gets out of town 
to some of the hundred beaches nearby and 
sweats in a train or gets caught in an undertow 
and carried to Newfoundland. But in the win- 
ter, Sunday in New York is pretty tame for 
the stranger. Most people go calling or to the 
Metropolitan Sunday night concert." 

"Pretty dead old town. New York, on Sun- 
day," wailed Joyce, in that final ennui which 
weighs on the stranger in a city more than on 
the man lost in Mojave. 

"Were you ever in London on Sunday.^" 
asked Blake. When Jovce shook his head 
dolefully, Blake went on: "Well, if New York 
is dead on Sunday, London is cremated." 

At this moment the French twins ap- 
peared. Before Blake and Joyce could dodge 



a66ortct) Sabbatbe 135 

each was in the embrace of a twin. With some 
difficulty tlieir half -Nelsons were broken, and 
Blake, looking about, saw with relief that no 
policeman was in sight. 

"Dieu mercir exclaimed Gaston, *'you have 
sev our life." 

"I apologize," said Blake. 

"I could kiss you for joy," cried Alphonse. 

"Not for a million!" said Joyce, squaring off. 

'' Sacre nom de nom d'un chienr wailed Gas- 
ton, *'but is it that zeesa is a city or ze desairt de 
Sahara.^" 

"I have thirst like a chameau wiz six estom- 
acs. Pourquoi is it zat il ny a pas one little 
cafe on ze pave — not a — as you say — not a one 
damn!" 

"That 1 had leave not my dear Paree!" wailed 
Gaston, and Alphonse, putting his handkerchief 
to his eyes, tried to lean on Blake; but the lat- 
ter was no longer there. 

"I go into a pharmacien," explained Gaston, 
with dramatic pantomime that began to draw 
a crowd, "I say, 'Give me of to drink, I beg 
of it, I go to die.' He ask me if I scream, so I 
scream. He take a tall verve like the Tour d'Eif- 
fel, he turn a littla wheel and a syrup come. He 
put in of the glace " 

"He put in glass!" exclaimed Joyce. "Why, 
that's used to kill rats." 

"We are a rat, then," Alphonse broke in. 
"Then he turn anawther littla wheel like a auto- 



136 Zhc IReal IRcw ^ov\\ 

mobile. Out come a fine water wiz hissing — 
s-s-s-s-s! Comme ^a! Zen anawther wheel and 
bubbles like the soap in a pipe." 

And Alphonse and Gaston both bubbled. 

*' There is a young ladies who also have ze 
same. We make imitation. We eat water wiz 
a spoon and drink of ze glace. Comme cest 
drole. But when we feenish we have more thirst 
as never." 

It made Joyce thirsty, too, to hear this account 
of a national beverage. He dashed for a saloon 
door. 

"Locked!" he exclaimed, like an entrapped 
heroine of melodrama. ''I've read of your New 
York 'dry Sundays.' Is it possible.^" 

"New York is the victim of the Raines 
law, as of various other laws drawn up at 
Albany by rural members who try to save us 
from perdition by making our laws for us. 
But where there's a law there's a loophole. 
Look!" 

He led Joyce to the window. The little doors 
in the woodwork were open. The usual line of 
thirsty mankind was conspicuously absent. Not 
a drinker was there. 

"But see," cried Joyce; "I see a man in shirt 
sleeves behind the bar. And he is mixins: some- 
thing in a tall glass. Ow! he's putting in a dash 
of bitters. Help! help! he's stirring the 
cracked ice with a long spoon. He's pouring it 
out. There comes a waiter. He takes the 



aesortcb Sabbatbe 



137 



glasses on a tray. He disappears into tlie back 
room. Quick, lead me to it!" 

Round the corner lie darted, followed by the 
representatives of the free Press and the French 
Republic. A double storm door marked "Fam- 



ily Entrance" 
It was locked. 
But Blake 
and the rear 
away yielded, 
yield to the 
led his squad 
room filled with 



was 
He 




there. He tried it. 

almost fainted, 
went around, 
door two feet 
How doors 
Press! H e 
a large 
tables sur- 



A SUNDAY OUTING 



rounded by men of all types and a few women 
of one type. 

They gave their orders. A waiter slammed a 
sandwich before them. 

"What's that.^" said Joyce. 

"That is a meal," said Blake. "Drinks can 
be served on Sundays only with a meal." 

"Must we eat it .^" 

"Oh, no, RoUo. The waiter would expire if 



138 Zhc 1Rcal mew l^orh 

you did. The law simply says that a meal must 
accompany the drink. It did not say that the 
drinkist must eat the meal. Nor did it say what 
a meal consisted of. Merciful judges have de- 
cided that one sandwich satisfies the law. If 
you ate it you would find it more than filling, 
because it is probably of rubber or celluloid. 
Thus are the morals of New York preserved by 
the kind Senators from Watertown and Her- 
kimer." 

*'But how it is of hypocrisy!" said Gaston. 
"In Paree we sit out of doors in ze sunlight, at 
ze littla tables wiz leddies and gentlaman who 
do not forget zey are leddies and gentlaman, for 
zey are where tout le monde observe. But in 
Amerique you go in a dark chambre and look 
sad and ashamed and go on ze street only when 
you are — how you say.^ — dronk!" 

" Oh, but you forget," said Blake, " that Amer- 
ica is virtuous and Paris is wicked. And our 
preachers would rather have purgatory than that 
horrible, incoherent thing known as the 'Conti- 
nental Sunday.' " 

The Frenchmen had ordered little glasses of 
claret and they were taking it very slowly — a 
sip every five minutes. The waiter glared at 
them. Blake explained that in America one 
must drink some strong drinks and drink them 
quickly. 

"It is only on Sundays that New Yorkers sit 
at a table for liquid refreshments," he said. 



a60ortc& Sabbatb6 139 

"Za vie est breve en Amerique,'' sighed Gas- 
ton. 

"Yes, we Yankees die fast and furious — like 
a chicken with a twisted neck. But a good deal 
of it is bluff," Blake explained, with that cyni- 
cism which no reporter escapes. " When we are 
not rushed we pretend to be. An American 
wouldn't dare be seen loafing at a sidewalk cafe; 
it would ruin his reputation as a business man. 
A Frenchman will sit down at a simlit table and 
spend half an hour over a demi-litre of Munich 
beer, and then go cheerfully about his business. 
An American will hang over a wet bar in a dark, 
close room for two hours, drink six or eight high- 
balls and go back to his office with a woolly 
brain. But that's because we are an industri- 
ous and virtuous nation and you people are lazy 
and vicious." 

Joyce was almost as angry as the waiter at 
seeing the evil foreigners dawdle over their vice. 
So he insisted on introducing them to a series of 
strangely named compounds, beginning with a 
highball — which Gaston called an *' eyeball" be- 
cause it superinduced strabismus. This was 
followed bv a drv Martini with a stuffed olive, a 
gin rickey, a sherry flip and a Tom Collins. 

Gaston was the earlier of the two to succumb, 
and the room began to remind him of the Ferris 
wheel which he had seen at the Paris Exposi- 
tion. Alphonse, wishing to learn the mechan- 
ism of this strange chemistry, was aided to the 



140 ^be IReal IRcw ^ov\\ 

door of the barroom by Joyce. Embracing the 
casement he watched the deft figure in snowy 
vestments at his alchemy. The left hand held 
a tall glass into which the swift right, darting 
here and there to bottles and flagons of divers 
shapes, poured, tossed or decanted in long, 
straight streams numberless disguises of alcohol. 
Then a scoop of shaved ice, the tinkle of dex- 
terous stirring, the toss of a maraschino cherry 
or a twist of golden lemon peel, and the liqueur 
gurgled into small shell glasses for the titillation 
of the glossal papillse and the consternation of 
the duodenum. Joyous deglutition and painful 
endosmosis did the rest. 

"Ze gentlaman is at zhe shem time a grand 
artishte and a mushicien d'un talent de-hic- 
licieux. He desherve le decoration du cordon- 
hic-bleu. Vive le barkeepair!" 

Having now satisfied that curious American 
passion for compelling other people to drink more 
than they desire, Blake called a cab, for w^hich 
Joyce paid, and the twins went gloriously home, 
Alphonse chanting "La Marseillaise," Gaston, 
with a finer courtesy, roaring the *'Stair- 
Bengel Spannaire." 

Sunday afternoon dragged its slow length 
along like a wounded snake, and the evening 
confronted Joyce. His face brightened. 

"Thank heaven, we can go to a theatre some- 
where." 

"On Sundav?" exclaimed Blake. "In Chi- 



Hesortcb Sabbatba i^i 

Cairo or Tsintsinatti or New Orleans or St. Louis, 

ves; but not in New York. How often must I 

1/ 

tell you that New York is virtuous ? There are 
a few so-called sacred concerts of vaudeville, but 
they are sadder than a village prayer-meeting.'* 

''Damn your virtues! What, oh, what shall 
I do .^" wailed Joyce. 

"We might go to a prize-fight." 

"A prize-fight!" Joyce exclaimed, brightening 
again. "I thought it was forbidden altogether 
in New York, even on weekdays." 

"Lots of things are forbidden," said Blake. 
"But there are several little arguments on to- 
night. One of them is at Columbia Hall, on 
upper First Avenue; another is at a private gym- 
nasium, where two professionals, one from Aus- 
tralia, are to meet; the referee is to be an ex- 
champion of England. You'll see some of the 
best known brokers, lawyers, society leaders, 
saloon-keepers and gamblers there, and if the 
police don't get round too early, it will be good 
sport. But there is another fight near the East 
River and Seventh Street, in the old Dry Dock 
district. It will be more picturesque." 

In good season, Joyce and Blake were winding 
their way through streets of such darkness that 
Joyce felt a bit uneasy at meeting their few but 
ugly denizens. Over a low-browed saloon was 
a "Young Men's Reform Club," and up the 
stairs several men were hastening. At the 
stairway stood a policeman. As Joyce and 



142 ^be IRcal mew l^orft 

Blake approached they heard him stop a rough- 
looking youth, and say: 

" What's all this crowd up to ? " 

" It's de annual election of de club, you mut. 
It's a free country, I guess yes; ain't it?" 
growled the youth. 

"I guess it is," said the policeman, idly flick- 
ing his locust by the cord. 

The annual election was about to begin when 
Joyce and Blake entered. There was a poll- 
tax of ten dollars a head, which Blake ex- 
plained and Joyce paid. The two candidates 
were stripped to the waist and wore young pil- 
lows on their hands. The polling place was 
surrounded with a rope. A campaign manager 
came forward and introduced the nominees. 

"Kine friends, we are goin' to try to pull off a 
neat little bit of de manly art to-night. It's got 
to be kep' confidential. I needn't tell youse dat 
de cops is on de dead lookout, an' hones' sport 
ain't gotter chanst in a hayseed place like New 
York. Dere can't be no noise, nor nuttin' — 
not even a gong. Anybody dat cheers gets trun 
out. It's up to youse to behave like gents, or de 
whole push will be pulled. Trus'in' dese few 
woids will be took to heart, I have de honor to 
interduce to youse two of de gamest bantams 
ever. Dey is truckdrivers in de daytime, but in 
deir veins is de blood of Jawn L. One of dem 
tinks de odder done him doit in a matter of in- 
fringin' on his rowt. So dey comes here to argy 



Heeortcb Sabbatb6 143 

it out fine and fancy. Foist, I'll present Bobby 
Hannin, known as Kid Corbett, Junior, who 
looks like a comin' champeen — stan' up, Bobby. 
In de odder corner you see Harold Fitzroy, de 
T'oroughbred T'underbolt. Shake ban's, boys, 
an' git to yer corners. An' now in conclusion, 
aujence, remember dat mum's de woid." 

The audience drew a deep breath and leaned 
forward. 

The two human game-cocks clasped mit- 
tens and broke away, circling about each other 
with arms churning the air like propeller screws. 
There was a deal of feinting for an opening and 
much ingenious foot- work; but not a blow was 
struck. It was magnificent, but it was not war. 
One of the spectators growled : 

"Git to it, you white-livered babies, git to it!" 

The rest said ''Hush!" in a loud tone. Then 
there was a sudden deafening crash. Each of 
the fighters felt that he had been knocked out 
and one of them fell to the ground and listened 
for the count. But it was only a policeman who 
forced open a door and said : 

"Sorry to distoib you, gents, but the captain 
is downstairs with his friend. Black Maria." 

Someone turned out the lights. There was a 
dash in all directions. Joyce was trampled, 
kicked and finally bunted through a window left 
unguarded by the police. A short fall brought 
him to the roof of a shed. In the dim, sweet 
starlight he saw various ghosts disappearing 



144 Zhc IRcal mew l!)orft 

over the edge. He followed, and eventually 
reached the ground. Then he ran. He saw a 
lumber yard nearby. He started to climb a 
large pile. It came down with a roar like a 
hastily built apartment house. He barely es- 
caped, and darted for another refuge. He felt 
a hand on his shoulder. 

*'ls that you, Blake .^" he asked. 

"Me name's Rafferty," was the answer. 

Joyce turned and thought he saw stars. They 
were only brass buttons. A convoy of patrol 
wagons numerous as a Vladivostok fleet was re- 
quired to carry the sixty prisoners to jail. 

Later Joyce made one of a long line in front of 
the sergeant. The names given by the men in 
front of him sounded like the roster in the Hall of 
Fame at New York University. Among others 
present at the club election had evidently been 
various descendants of the Presidents. 

Joyce felt that his copyright was being in- 
fringed. The Presidents had been used up as 
far as Andrew Jackson when Joyce was reached. 
So he gave in the name of Old Hickory. The 
sergeant asked him if he had any friends to go 
on his bail. Joyce thought of various acquaint- 
ances — Blake, the French twins, De Peyster, the 
preacher, the poet. 

"Have I friends.^" he exclaimed. "IVe got 
'em to burn." 

"Is that so .^" said the sergeant. "Well^ have 
they got any real estate to boin ?'' 




A KNOCKOUT BY THE POLICE 



a66ortcb Sabbatb6 145 

Joyce's jaw dropped. Only De Peyster might 
own real estate in New York, and something told 
him that it was beyond even him to appeal to 
De Peyster. There were certain customers to 
whom he w^as trying to sell church vestments, 
but he felt that it might not help trade to ask 
them to relieve him from a scrape of this sort. 
There was nothing for it but to go to his cell in 
one of the galleries of the great beehive of iron 
and stone. 

Some of his fellow-voters took the affair with 
the ease of old habit; they were inclined to break 
forth into song, much to the distress of the other 
guests and the sleepy watchman. But the 
heart of Joyce was empty of song. He wondered 
who had preceded him in his cell. He felt that 
he would rather sit up all night than lie down on 
that bed. Jn half an hour a policeman came 
and led him forth — to the guillotine.? he won- 
dered. It was to Blake. 

Blake had fallen into the hands of one of the 

quiet heroes who glorify the solid ranks of ''the 

finest." This officer had once found five thugs 

trying to do up a man who had "peached" on 

them. They turned on the policeman with two 

knives, a pair of "knuckles," a sandbag and a 

gun. He fought them all to a standstill, and 

only dropped when help had responded to the 

loud whir of his club on the pavement. This 

policeman was a wreck, his clothes in tatters, 

his helmet with a bullet hole in it, his shield 
10 



146 Zhc IRcal mew l^orft 

dented where another bullet had glanced, and 
his hands and face torn and bleeding. But you 
should have seen the five thugs! 

Now, it had fallen to Blake's lot to write up 
the courage of this typical policeman. He had 
made him a nine days' wonder and collected a 
purse for his family. And so the policeman who 
had arrested the five thugs somehow could not 
hold his friend "Ananias." Blake mysteriously 
got away. He entered the station now as a re- 
spectable citizen, and sent for Joyce. When he 
learned that Joyce had no one to bail him out, 
he said: 

"The first thing a stranger ought to do when 
he comes to New York is to make a friend of 
somebody with real estate and a telephone. 
One never knows when he may need bail." 

Blake knew a professional bondsman who un- 
derstood the ways of dodging the law, and, claim- 
ing Joyce as a dear friend, gave bond for his ap- 
pearance in court. The next morning the judge 
decided that as there had been no fight, there had 
been no misdemeanor. The police felt cha- 
grined at having prevented instead of punished 
a misdeed. Joyce was delighted, till he learned 
the charge of his bailsman. Then he groaned: 
"This is where I telegraph home for more 
money. I brought what I thought I could af- 
ford for two weeks. I've been here two days. 
Sports come high in this town." 



Chapter VIII 



CHINATOWN THE NUMBER OF CHINESE AND THEIR IN- 
DUSTRIES THEIR CLUBS, NEWSPAPER AND RELIGION 

THE JOSS HOUSE THE CHINESE NEW YEAR THE 

FUNERAL FEAST CHINESE AND WHITE WOMEN 

OPIUM THE HALF-BREED CHILDREN A RESTAURANT 

AND CHINESE BILL OF FARE A CHINESE SHOP THE 

CHINESE THEATRE A TYPICAL PLOT THE CHINESE 

ACTRESS THE AUDIENCE, THE ORCHESTRA AND THE 

PLAYERS 



SPEAKING of Seven-League Boots — we 
have changed all that. You can cross the 
Pacific Ocean in one step. Just turn to your 
right from Chatham Square, and — there you are! 
Chinatown is a different world; the very silence 
of it has a foreign sound to one coming out of 
the boiler factory of Chatham Square. In 
Chinatown the citizens move tacitly on felt-soled 
shoes. And they have a foreign way of walking 
in the streets, which are almost as narrow as the 
narrow sidewalks, and go with such crooks and 
turns that one of them — Pell Street — describes a 
semicircle, and, with true Oriental politeness, 
eventually leads you right back to the street you 
just left. 

In Chinatown you feel something sinister in 
the stealthy tread and prowling manner of 
these Celestial immigrants. Harmless soever 



148 Zbc IRcal IRew IPorft 

as they may be, they suggest melodramas of 
opium dens and highbinders. You happen on 
them in dark hallways, or find them looking at 
you from strange crannies of ramshackle struc- 
tures like night-blooming felines. 

Chinatown is truly a separate town, for 
though it has a population of hardly more than 
a thousand, there are seven times as many 
Chinese engaged in laundry and other tasks in 
other parts of New York, and there are colonies 
of pigtailed farmers out on Long Island, to 
whom Chinatown is a Mecca. The town's 
private affairs are governed by a committee of 
twelve prominent Chinese merchants and an 
annually elected "Mayor." The business of 
the municipality is partly drawn from curious 
sight seers, but largely from native patrons; the 
shops are devoted to celestial foodstuffs, pot- 
tery, jewelry, fabrics and laundry supplies. 
The tourists who cannot read the multicolored 
banners that hang out for signs can read only 
too well the shop-window allurements of porce- 
lains, ivories, silks, fans, screens and idols. 

Our imported chinaware is growing jealous of 
the praise heaped on japanned ware, and is show- 
ing progress of its own. At No. 5 Mott Street a 
new and modern building has been seized on 
as a centre of progress. On the top floor a 
printing plant has been installed — the Japanese 
having formerly done all Chinatown's press- 
work. A Chinese font of type contains some 



Cbinatovvn 149 

two thousand characters, but the new shop has 
imported a supply sufficient to publish a news- 
paper — and a newspaper with a mission at that, 
for it is to be devoted to reforming China and 
securing the deposition of the Empress. The 
editor wisely begins at a safe distance. He is 
Mr. Tong Chee, a reformed professor, and, with 
true Chinese reserve, his daily paper is to be 
published twice a month. 

The Reform News has a sworn circulation of 
10,000 to begin with, and it appeals to a Reform 
Association at home of over three million mem- 
bers, so that the affidavit editor will not reach 
the end of his rope so soon as did the New York 
newspaper circulation men in a recent bragging 
war, when the population began to give out 
before their enthusiastic perjuries. 

The building at No. 5 Mott Street also con- 
tains a new Joss House and the Oriental Club, 
which is a dozen years old and devotes itself to 
Americanizing its members and aiding the illu- 
mination of China. In this building, also, is 
the Reform Association; it has a "Ladies' 
Branch" composed of the sixty-five Chinese wo- 
men in this country. The president of this Ce- 
lestial Sorosis is Mrs. Fong Mow, a college grad- 
uate and wife of the author of a thrilling Chinese- 
English lexicon. A prominent member of this 
women's club is a lecturer. Miss Kang Tung 
Bac, and partly through her influence Chinese 
women have been not only brought to attend 



150 ^be IRcal IRcw ^ov\\ 

meetings, but even to adopt the odious Occi- 
dental custom of paying and receiving calls. 

The first thing an American thinks of in con- 
nection with a Chinaman is opium, as the first 
thing a Frenchman associates with an English- 
man is gin, which he rhymes with "God-sev-ze- 
quin." But those who claim to know say that 
among the four hundred million Chinese sub- 
jects in China there are several who do not 
indulge in this intoxicant smoke. Certain it 
is, that if you want to see an opium den in opera- 
tion you must manage to steal into the apart- 
ment of a private citizen taking his opium cum 
dignitate in solitude. 

You are more likely to find him and a few 
of his friends engaged in gambling away their 
American lucre on fan-tan or the more recent 
craze for "Peh Bin," which has swept over the 
Chinese world just as "bridge," that new pons 
asinorum, has spanned the rest of the world. 
"Peh Bin" means "eight faces" and refers to a 
sort of combination of the ordinary dice with the 
tops of our boyhood. An octagonal ivory or 
wooden lozenge on a peg carries a different char- 
acter on each face, and is set spinning in a sort 
of chafing-dish with a cover. A long paper 
marked with eight squares carrying the corre- 
sponding characters is laid on a table. It is in 
red and black, as are the characters, and the 
gamblers place their money on one of the squares 
or color-circles, much as in roulette, while the 



Cbinatown 



151 




A NEW 
YORKER 



top spins under the cover of the 
chafing-dish till it falls. The 
Chinese have thus solved the 
great sporting problem of New 
York — how to gamble while the 
"lid" is on. 

But, though "Peh Bin" rages, 
the opium den is very taciturn. 
Even Mr. *' Ananias" Blake, 
when the Rev. Mr. Granger, of 
Terre Haute, appealed to him 
for a chance to see an illusion- 
distillery in operation, was forced 
to confess his ignorance of such a place and 
refer the truth-seeker to the Detective Bureau. 
And the very detective had to answer: 

"I'd like to take your money, but, honesto- 
gawd! the only way I know to see an opium 
joint is to get one up special. If you want to 
entertain a party of ladies, I'll rent a room and 
a lay-out and get a couple of chinks to go through 
the motions, but it'll cost you about eighty dol- 
lars." 

Now, eighty dollars is a large price for truth 
when imagination is quoted so low, and the min- 
ister, regretfully rejoicing in New York's disap- 
pointing virtue, decided not to invest in a one- 
night opium-stand. But he drifted through the 
crooked streets with Mr. Simes, and felt at last 
that he had found something different, in kind 
as well as in degree, from Terre Haute. He 



152 ^bc IRcal mew l^ork 

chatted with Httle mongrel Mongols, whose faces 
showed strange combinations of almond eyes 
with noses and upper lips of Erin's own design. 
He asked one twelve-year-old his name and was 
told: 

"Me namee Patlick King Low." 

When he inquired further, his curiosity was 
rebuked by a string of Saxon gutter-eloquence in 
which he was invited to go to that very place 
against which he had always warned his parish- 
ioners. He noted that certain of the Chinese 
were accompanied by women more or less well 
dressed and of undoubted Caucasian breed. 

"Those ladies are mission workers, I sup- 
pose.^" he inquired of Simes, who answered, 
uneasily: 

"Well, they — yes — they are interesting them- 
selves in the welfare of the Chinese. They try 
to divert them from homesickness, and they per- 
suade the Chinamen to invest their money here 
instead of sending it back to China." 

" Most commendable work, too, I should say, 
and very courageous they must be; they seem 
not at all afraid." 

" They know their way about." 

"That lady with the pail— what is it she car- 
ries.^ Seems rather frothy — like root beer." 

"Well, it's something like root beer." Then 
he changed the subject. 

"Too bad you didn't get to town earlier, suh. 
February 15th was the beginning of the 



Cbinatown 153 

Chinese New Yeali's Day; it lasts a week. 
New York has three New Yeah's Days every 
yeah — the Christian, tlie Chinese and the Jewish. 
The Chinese celebrated in 1904 the 4,079th 
year of the empiah; they still maintain the cus- 
tom of paying calls; these serve as an excuse for 
drinking; they smoke from long tin pipes, and 
drink rice wine, and also a good deal of ongaway, 
which by any otheh name would smell as whisky, 
suh. In every ho'se there is an altah with its little 
god, taking a light lunch of incense smoke from 
large joss sticks, while the less spiritual man is 
tempted by celestial viands, fruits and nuts, 

*' There is a remarkable Chinese custom that 
sounds most cu'ious, and shows how basely we 
flatteh ourselves, suh, when we call the Chinese 
a dishonest race; for one of their habits is the 
clearance of all debts by the fust of every yeah. 
It is actually a public disgrace to be found carry- 
ing a debt oveh from one yeah to the next. 
Even the relatives play a violent paht in trying 
to fo'ce payment from the shameless debtoh. 
When we contrast this feeling with its practical 
absence from ouah social considerations, suh, 
we realize the Chinese stability. 

"At noon on New Yeah's Day every China- 
man, and woman, and child climbs to the Joss 
Ho'se, kneels, touches his forehead to the flo', 
and exclaims, ' Ga ne fo toy, ' which is to wish 
the god a Happy New Yeah. If they'd only 
wish him a new face! 



154 Zbc IRcal mcw) l^ork 

"The streets are gay and odd enough at any 
time, with their hanging shields and bannehs in 
place of the rigid signs of the Caucasian, but 
New Yeah's week they are most beautifully 
bedecked with yellow silk pendants, lanterns 
and tasseled cloths. And now let us invade 
their temple, or Joss Ho'se." 

Up long flights of crooked stairs the parson 
puffed. He made a strange picture confronted 
by the long-robed priest of a rival god, Gwang 
Gwing Shing Te, who claims an age beside 
which the eternal years of Jehovah seem like 
youth and Buddha a parvenu. The original 
founder of the Chinese worship is here painted 
between his effeminate secretary, Lee Poo, and 
his ferocious sergeant-at-arms, Tu Chong. The 
footlight row of candles gives a fitting theatrical 
touch to the scene, and the great carved wood 
altar is covered with vases of bronze and with 
cups full of luck-guaranteeing joss sticks. Chi- 
nese worship is a sort of feat in mechanical engi- 
neering, and all manner of labor-saving devices 
have been invented to put our vauntedly scien- 
tific age to shame. 

As the priest from Terre Haute stared at the 
polite parson from Kwantung — where almost all 
our Chinamen grow — various Celestials were 
paying devoirs to the god who makes so little 
demand on their time. The Chinamen piously 
lighted their incense sticks, burned their quota 
of shaving paper, poured their drops of rice wine, 



Chinatown 



155 



IN A 

CHINATOWN 

AUDIENCE 



muttered their formula, ti})pe(l the ohli^^ing 
deity, and bowed themselves out till the next 
holiday or funeral feast. 

The great annual event, the 
funeral feast, falls in the 
third moon of the Chinese 
year; it was April 24 in 
1904. On this day the 
mourners go to Cypress Hills, in 
Brooklyn, where most of their 
dead are buried until money is 
raised to send their bodies 
home in state to join their 
ancestors. At the grave, 
squares of gilded rice 
paper are burned as 
grave money ' ' — ferry 
fare for the departed. Food is left on the tomb 
that the dead may not starve to death, and in- 
cense and six candles are burned at each grave. 
The outward suits of woe among the Chinese are 
blue and white ribbons on the queue and on the 
shoes, worn for three days, and a strip of blue 
worn for three years. 

Mr. Granger found the scene in the Joss 
House so peaceful and the priest so genial that 
he caught himself salaaming his way out in 
Chinese fashion, though oblivious of the fact 
that, as in all other churches, the contribution 
box is never closed. And he went to his 
lodgings, blissful in the conviction that China- 




156 Zhc IRcal IRcw lJ)orh 

town is a quiet, virtuous city of peace and good 
will. 

Meanwhile, A. J. Joyce was also hunting ex- 
perience. He was bitterly disappointed at be- 
ing unable to find any opium hells, though he 
came near being thrown neck and crop out of a 
number of private apartments where his in- 
trusion was received with the same indignation 
it would have met had he tried to go slumming 
on Madison Avenue. There is no lack of places 
where, in low bunks, hollow-cheeked Chinamen 
are stretched in gaunt stupidity smoking the 
mystic pellet that gives them visions of strange 
Edens of delight, strange aphrodisiac raptures, 
strange sensations of infinite wealth and power, 
followed by reactions into unutterable torments 
of fear and racking pain. In some of these 
crannies women sprawl shameless in the 
same imbecile drunkenness — old crones whose 
life is but a mad appetite, who pay for their 
dream-revels with withered health and wasted 
mind. They foreshadow the destiny of all who 
offer tribute to hasheesh, but the horror of their 
fate does not deter many a pretty girl from be- 
ginning the same path, from laying aside de- 
cency and fear, to give herself to the embraces 
and the contagion of a loathsome Chinese slave 
of the lamp. These dens exist, but as far as 
possible from the discovery of the police, and by 
so much the more remote from the finding of the 
casual tourist. 



Cbinatown 157 

Failing to discover an opium joint, Joyce found 
the restaurants more hospitable. In fact, they 
fairly commanded his appetite, with their bal- 
conies gaily bannered and radiant with glowing 
lanterns of rich color. His zest for statistics 
had given him a knowledge of certain Chinese 
dishes, and he led Blake up the stairs of the 
handsomest restaurant he could find. The 
place was called the Chinese Delmonico's and 
the room pleased the Chicagoan mightily, with 
its strange ceilings, its walls decorated with 
Chinese art, arches with their dragons coiling 
slimily amid ornate figurations of gilded wood, 
and graceful, bare tables surrounded by quaint 
stools. The room was clean, as are all things 
Chinese, and the kitchen lay in full view with a 
reassuring neatness. 

The guests of the hostelry were a mixed ar- 
ray of wide-eyed and loud-voiced sightseers, of 
solemn Chinese deftly stoking themselves by 
means of chopsticks from bowls held close to 
their mouths, and of Bowery youth earnestly 
filling themselves with chop suey— that substan- 
tial hash made of duck and chicken giblets, bean 
shoots and celery stewed to a mucilage. 

Joyce found a table, and, proud of his knowl- 
edge, beckoned the grinning Chinese waiter, 
and, without consulting the bill of fare, com- 
manded : 

"Bring the best you got for two. We'll have 
some bird's nest soup and some shark's fins, two 



158 ^be IReal IRew IPorft 

steamed pigeons, a stack of pineapple chips and 
some lychee nuts. That'll do for a starter, eh ?" 

Mr. Blake bowed. 

" And some extly fine tea .^" queried the waiter, 
grinning still wider. 

"Yep." 

The order was speedily filled and Joyce con- 
fessed to Blake that China could teach even Chi- 
cago a few things. The tea was delicious, served 
in the little decorated bowls and poured round 
the edge of the saucer, set on top, into the trans- 
lucent cups, with their strange little shallop 
spoons. 

The Chicagoan felt his soul expand, and de- 
cided to buy an individual tea set for " Ananias " 
and one to take home to the family. When these 
were wrapped up he called for the bill. He 
watched the cashier sliding the beads of his 
counting machine and said to Blake: 

"The Chinese live well, even if they do live 
cheap. I'll bet that bill will surprise a man used 
to American prices." 

It did. 

" Exactly ten dollies fifty cen'," said the waiter, 
through his grin. Joyce had just breath enough 
to demand an itemized account and to long for 
a little fluency in Celestial profanity. The waiter 
showed him the menu, and, with an impressively 
long finger nail, pointed out the prices: Bird's 
nest soup, one dollar and a half per plate; shark 
fins, two dollars a fin; steamed pigeons, two for 



Cbinatown 159 

fifty cents apiece; pineapples, twenty-five cents 
a stack; the best Ling Gee Sum tea, twenty-five 
cents a cup; lychee nuts, twenty-five cents a por- 
tion; the tea sets, fifty cents each. 

The Chicagoan ran it up on the original count- 
ing board of the human fingers and growled : 

"Stung again! You can keep your tea 
things." 

He forgot to tip the waiter and stumbled down 
the stairs. 

"Talk about the Waldorf!" he said. "It's a 
free lunch compared with the slums." 

"You must see the Chinese theatre before you 
go," said Blake. 

"Is it any more expensive than a box at the 
Metropolitan Opera .^" 

"You can get a seat for twenty-five cents, or 
a box seat for fifty cents." 

On these terms Joyce consented. They passed 
a shop window which lured Joyce within. 

"I've got to take something home to the fam- 
ily," he said, "and, seeing I didn't keep the tea 
set, I'll get something here. Things must be 
cheap, being made by coolie labor." 

Before he had priced many articles he came 
to the conclusion that the coolies must have re- 
cently organized a union. He made a trifling 
purchase and stole out. 

They made their way around to No. 5 Doyers 
Street. A large automobile carryall was waiting 
before the bare little hovel. Blake explained : 



160 . z\K IRcal mew ^ov\{ 

" It's a gang of society folks slumming. People 
on the East Side are so used to it that they look 
at you in surprise if you come down after six in 
anything but evening clothes." 

A heathenish racket came muffled through the 
board front of the little theatre and deafened 
them as they stepped into the completely curi- 
ous, low and crooked auditorium. 

Here, on tall benches as innocent of backs as 
a Puritan pew, roosted a dark flock of a few hun- 
dred pigtailed penguins. The Chinamen all 
wore broad felt hats, and were all smoking. The 
stage had no curtain and no scenery; two doors 
stood for wings, and in one of them the prompter 
and director stood in full view. With that de- 
termination to be different in which China rivals 
certain poets, the orchestra was arranged along 
the side and back of the stage. Four or five 
fiends of the musical trade were squatted on 
tables and making night hideous with all the 
forms of ear torment imaginable. Every few 
seconds the gong was smitten with a clangor 
that went in at one ear and out at the other, 
leaving a headache behind it. There was a pair 
of huge and beautifully ornamented bronze cym- 
bals, and there were other instruments less head- 
splitting, but even less musical than a banjo. 

" Reminds me of one of the shivarees we used 
to serenade bridal couples with in Illinois," said 
Joyce. "Only instrument lacking seems to be 
a tomato can on a tarred string." 



Cbinatown lei 

The orchestral score of these Chinese Philhar- 
monics could be written without notes, if there 
were any form of italics and exclamation points 
that would do justice to the neuralgia of noise. 
A favorite leit-motif went something like this: 

"Bang! whang! click — cluckety — bang! 

"Cluck! bang! 

"Cluck! bang! 

" Cluck! bang! 

" Cluck ! rattlety — bing ! beng ! bong ! bung ! ! ! " 

The voices of the actors were in keeping with 
this dulcet symphony. The very gestures were 
deafening, and the faces they made in expressing 
their emotions rivaled the Gordian knot in in- 
tricacy. The men spoke, or rather squealed, in 
a falsetto violence that resembled an argument 
on "Soul Migration" at a Theosophical meet- 
ing. But there was a woman who put them all 
in the shade; for, in this free country, the Chi- 
nese have revolutionized their theatre enough 
to permit a woman to act, while at home the stage 
is in the same period, with regard to female im- 
personation, as ours in Shakespeare's day. 

This Chinese Ellen Terry is said to be the only 
one in the world, and she rejoices in the catarrhal 
name of Ng Ah. She is not beautiful, even ac- 
cording to Chinese standards, and her impres- 
sionistic system of make-up is disconcerting; but 
her robes and headdresses are of ravishino: 
beauty. 

It is needless to say that, being a member of a 
11 



162 ^be IRcal mew l^orft 

despised caste, she chiefly loves to impersonate 
the sacred Empress, In a Chinese play the big 
"moments" last an hour, and her favorite "bit" 
is about as long as two acts of a play of ours. 
In this she plays the part of the Emperor's favor- 
ite wife. Her great scene has been described as 
follows: "It seems that the Emperor's son by 
another wife has been sentenced to death. The 
mother of the boy comes to beg his father to 
spare him. She is but a plain-looking woman, 
and a man acts the part, at that; but whenever 
she tries to approach the Emperor, the favorite, 
splendidly arrayed and with all the witchery a 
jealous woman can bring to bear, bars the way. 
Now she fans the Emperor, wheedling and cajol- 
ing him the while, or holds her loose sleeve before 
his face so that he cannot so much as see the 
modestly clad and humble figure at his feet. 
When at last the mother, driven to desperation, 
allows herself to be drawn into a war of fans, 
the favorite cleverly contrives to make the sup- 
pliant's fan strike the royal person. Such a 
crime as this is past all forgiveness; the offend- 
ing mother is hurried from tlie august presence 
and the triumph of her heartless rival is com- 
plete." 

They say that in China a word alters its en- 
tire meaning with its pitch, and that a syllable 
spoken in a soprano voice will be a delicate com- 
pliment, while the same syllable spoken in the 
ehest amounts to a challenge to a., dueb One 



Cbinatown 



163 



cannot blame the Chinaman, then, for being 
careful of his twenty-five voices; but to the Amer- 
ican it is most distressing, especially in the ex- 
aggerated form of stage expression. At Doyers 
Street you will hear a healthy-looking man vio- 
lently emitting the squeals of a pig going to exe- 
cution and alternating these with guttural rasps 




that would tear even an American football root- 
er's throat to rags. 

Mr. Joyce tried to take down the actual words 
of one of the scenes to read to the family at home, 
but he soon gave it up. So far as it went, his 
record was as follows: 

"Kung! meow! squawawak! gung dummilung 
yung! wow! brek-ek-ek-ex ! coax! hullabaloo! 
skookum! meow! fstt! yung dummilung yung! 
wow ! 

I hope I haven't quoted anything improper, 
and 1 hope that no philologist will carp at the 



164 



^be IRcal IHcw WovW 



spelling. But words like these have a bewilder- 
ing effect when delivered at the full speed and 
volume of a pair of leather-bound lungs and ac- 
companied by gesticulations and 
facial manipulations frightful to 
behold. It is only fair to say that 
to the Chinese our theatres are just 
as outlandishly unhuman and ridic- 
ulous as theirs to us. 

Chinese plays are notoriously 
long. The New Year's play lasts 
a week, and so do many others. 
As everybody knows, the stage 
mechanism resembles that in "A 
Midsummer Night's Dream." 
Chairs represent walls, bridges, 
cities, citadels — anything. The 
convenience and economy of this 
system is delightful, especially when 
one of the actors steps forward and 
braces the chair for another. Then there is a 
door which may represent death. The cleanly 
Chinaman hates to have corpses cluttering up the 
stage; accordingly, when it is necessary to take a 
human life, the executioner makes a few passes 
round the doomed man's head with a sword, and 
the unfortunate wretch simply scoots out at the 
death door. So much for Bolingbroke! Every 
man his own undertaker. 

The Chicagoan watched this special play in in- 
creasing bef uddlement. He wrote home about it : 




Cblnatowii i65 

"The noise of that orchestra gave me the 
toothache. When I went in, two men were 
fighting. Both were stripped to the waist, and 
one of them carried a sword and the other a 
pitchfork — a trident, Blake called it. They 
fought, two up and two down, like we did when 
we gave amatoor shows in the barn and charged 
ten pins admission. Well, after fighting a while 
and caterwauling at each other like two old toms 
on a back-yard fence, one of them slid out at 
death's door. 

*'Then the woman actress came in with a 
big wicker shield and a sword. I thought she 
was a kind of Joan of Arc, but the audience all 
laughed, so I suppose it was funny. But she 
put up a poor fight, and the man disarmed her. 
Then she let down her back hair and I looked 
for a tropical scene, like in Hall Caine's 'Chris- 
tian,' but my hopes were doomed, for she went 
out at death's door. Then back comes the 
other man, so I guess it wasn't death's door after 
all. He had a shield and sword now, so the 
two men went at it again, hammer and tongs. 
Then one of them fell down and turned a series 
of somersaults all over the place. It was fine 
acrobatics, but was it art.^ Then he hid under 
the shield. Then he wrestled with the other 
man. 

"Then the dead woman came back to life, 
and helped her husband — or father, or brother, 
son-in-law, or whatever he was— to tie the 



166 z\K IReal mew l^orft 

acrobat. Then she and her husband, or what- 
ever he was, wrestled all round the place in most 
amazing style. Then they all went away and 
some fellows came on and put up a sort of a 
booth, very beautiful colors and all that. Then 
came in a strange old boy, with long white 
whiskers — a judge, I guess. Then some people 
dragged in the man that had been tied up, and 
he cut up scandalous. He actually put his foot 
up on the judge's desk— or was it a pulpit.^ 
Then the judge walloped him well with a long- 
pole until the old judge fell down exhausted. 
The woman with the black hair helped the 
judge up to his feet, and he went back to the 
bench and began a speech that would have 
got on the nerves of a plaster cast. And as he 
showed no signs of letting up, I came home." 

On the way out, Joyce met Miss Collis, and 
in spite of De Peyster's evident annoyance, he 
reminded her of their train-wreck meeting. 

''What do you think of Chinatown .^" he said. 

*'Oh, it's all very tame to what we have in 
San Francisco," she answered. "Have you 
bought any souvenirs.^" 

"Not much," he replied, sheepishly; "nothing 
very ornamental, but a little something useful." 

He produced a little celluloid hand on a long 
stick. 

" It's a back-scratcher," he explained. " Well, 
good-night. So long, Ananias. Me to my 
downy." 



Chapter IX 



NEW YORK S GARDEN OF EDEN MADISON SQUARE GARDEN 

— ITS BEAUTY — DIANA, THE PATRON GODDESS THE 

SIZE OF THE BUILDING AND WHAT IT CONTAINS THE 

VARIOUS SHOWS THE HORSE SHOW — VENICE — THE 

ARION AND OTHER MASKED BALLS TYPICAL SCENES 

AN EARLY MORNING DRIVE SUNRISE IN NEW YORK 



THEY were taking a short cut through 
Madison Square. Over the tops of 
the trees there soared a graceful, creamy 
shaft. It was vague and ghostly. Twilight 
was filling the town with its savory smoke. 
Suddenly, the shaft bloomed into radiance like 
a constellation. Electric letters flamed white 
against the dusky sky. Blake and Joyce ex- 
claimed in one voice: 

"To-night the Arion Ball is on at Madison 
Square Garden!" 

Madison Square Garden! How much that 
means to the New Yorker. It is the most New 
Yorkish thing in the town. It is a compendium 
of the city life in one volume ; and well it may be, 
for there is no other building in the world, to 
be sure, that houses one-half the gaiety and 
energy, or half the variety. 

The pious Manhattanist opens his windows 



168 Z]K IReal mew ^ov\{ 

toward that tower. He says all the prayers he 
ever says to the goddess Diana poised aloft, 
clad only in her coat of skin-tight gold and in a 
thin flying scarf that twirls and cnrls from her 
aerial shoulders. She is well fitted to be the 
goddess of New York, save for her excessive 
reputation as a prude, and, as to that, the new^s- 
papers of her day had much to say of a certain 
— but that would be gossiping. 

Diana was the bachelor girl of her time. She 
is New York's proper deity, for she exults in 
life; she is always a-tiptoe with restlessness; she 
is gilded and graceful; and she twirls with every 
breeze, pointing her arrow down any wind 
where there's a chance of game. Diana, hunt- 
ress of pleasure, long may you pirouette above 
this pleasure-hunting town ! 

Never goddess had fairer haunt, for her 
tower is a thing of glory by day, and at night, 
shadowily hinted by its altitudinous electric 
globes, it is a vision of poetry. This giralda is 
an improvement on its original in Seville, which 
it surpasses in splendor and in the grace of its 
graduated flights of architecture. 

The building from which this swift high shaft 
leaps up is the dearest thing in New York's 
heart — dearest in a double sense, for its rental 
is a thousand dollars a night. And yet, it has 
never paid expenses. Still, whenever a hint of 
tearing it down has been whispered, a million 
voices have gone up against the sacrilege. 



IHcw ^ovWb (Barbcn of £^c\\ i69 



Turn it into a temple, a post-office, anything; 
but keep it erect so long as the town holds 
beauty in esteem. 

'*What London would be without St. Paul's, 
or Paris without the Arc de Triomphe," said 
Blake, "that is what New 
York would be without Madi- 
son Square Garden." He had 
run into A. J. Joyce, who was 
feeling lonely, and declined to 
be shaken off. He saw a chance 
for a statistical display now, 
and broke out: 

"The Garden, they say, is 
the largest amusement temple 
in the country, and one of the 
largest in the world. The Diana is 
365 feet above the ground. The 
amphitheatre is 300 feet long, 200 
feet broad and 80 feet high; it seats 
6,000 people, and is lighted by 7,000 
incandescents. I was up in the tower to-day and 
I could see beyond Grant's Tomb, far over 
into New Jersey, and well across Long Island. 
The building, I find, cost $3,000,000, and it held 
14,000 people once when Grover Cleveland 
spoke. Besides the huge amphitheatre, it con- 
tains that large theatre where companies play 
all season, and then there's a small hall, where 
concerts are given." 

"I saw a contest for the billiard cham- 




A NEW YORKER 



170 Zbc IRcal IRew ^oxk 

pionship of the world there once," said 
Blake. 

"And there's a restaurant where a thousand 
people can be served," the Chicagoan persisted. 
"The basement will hold troops of cavalry, or 
Barnum's menagerie, or any old thing. On the 
roof I hear that concerts and comic operas or 
vaudeville are given in summer, and for the last 
two summers they say you could spend an 
evening there in Japan, with a Japanese toy 
landscape, a Japanese opera and Japanese 
dishes served by geishas." 

If there is any more beautiful temple of 
pleasure in the world than Madison Square 
Garden, it must be in some of the undiscovered 
regions, for it has not yet been seen by civilized 
men trying to forget civilization. 

What form of amusement has the New Yorker 
not seen in this microcosm ? Here he is brought 
as a child to see the Greatest Show on Earth 
on a greater scale than in any tent — though not 
so easy to crawl under. Here the menagerie 
has overwhelmed him with its animals almost 
as fearful and wonderful as the menagerie of 
adjectives Tody Hamilton has gathered out of 
the backwoods of the dictionary. That com- 
plicated, noisy menagerie smell has dislocated 
his nose, as later the three-ring circus has 
dislocated his eyes. 

Playing so important a part in the New York 
child's education, it is small wonder he loves it 



IRcw ^ovWb 6arbcn of lE^cn in 

when he is grown. And it grows with him; for 
when the circus is over, he goes to the Dog 
Show, and gets deliciously frightened out of his 
wits by the barking of a thousand canines, 
leaping and tugging at their chains, and thrust- 
ing their heads out to bite — or, what is worse, 
to lather him with their impartial tongues. 
His little sister is taken to the Cat Show, where 
the priceless Angoras doze and purr, and where 
the town's practical joker, Bryan G. Hughes, 
once took first prize with a common tom cat 
picked up in the gutter. 

Once a year the Garden calls in all the coun- 
try cousins and the farmers, real or amateur, 
to see the Poultry Show, where lovers of the 
Plymouth Rock can quarrel with the devotees 
of the Brahma and the Cochin China, and where 
the game-cocks and the featherweight bantams 
challenge one another to mortal combat all day 
long in safety. 

When the New Yorker grows older he prob- 
ably joins a regiment — Squadron A, or the Sev- 
enth, if he has the price — one of the others other- 
wise. The Military Tournament draws him to 
the Garden next, and his heart jounces as he 
sees the cavalryman running alongside his bare- 
back horses, four abreast, and, as they take a 
hurdle, vaulting across three loping steeds and 
plouncing squarely on the fourth horse, but fac- 
ing toward the tail. There he will see the artil- 
lery teams come dashing round the oval, swirling 



172 Zhc IRcal mew l^ork 

the tanbark in clouds as they slidder on a sharp 
turn and nicely drive between the narrow posts. 
There the New Yorker's ears crackle from the 
musketry and cannonade of the sham battles. 
Each of the regiments is represented in the open- 
ing review, and then the Canadians stalk in 
khaki and the gorgeous Highlanders, with their 
squealing bagpipes, flaunt their tartans. 

In this big space the New Yorker has seen 
the charge up San Juan Hill done in miniature, 
and the tears came to his eyes as the boys swung 
past chanting, "There'll Be a Hot Time in the 
Old Town To-night." It was at "The Wild 
West Show" he saw this, for the show has other 
things to tempt the spectator weary of Indians. 
But who can ever weary of the tame savages 
in their outrageous make-up, or the old Dead- 
wood stage-coach that goes round and round, 
pursued by Indians shooting it full of paper 
wads and falling off to the ground as they them- 
selves die twice a day from an overdose of blank 
cartridges ? 

The famous six-day bicycle race takes place 
here annually, and all night long the benches 
are crowded with enthusiasts watching the jaded 
riders pumping away on their eternal treadles. 
The yellow journals picture them as going mad 
with fatigue, but in reality they bear the grind 
with amazing indifference, except when a spec- 
tator offers a cash prize for a short race; then 
they brighten up and flash round like demons. 



1Rew ^ovWb (5art)cn of iB^cn 173 

They seem always to keep one more spurt up 
their sleeves. 

Then there's the Sportsmen's Show, and the 
building becomes a great landscape, with all 
manner of wild places condensed into one med- 
ley. This year one end was a range of moun- 
tains, with real trees and real streams of real 
water. The water turned two old-fashioned 
wheels and then cascaded into a big lake in the 
centre. One end of the lake was thick with all 
manner of waterfowl, and in another part was 
a fish hatchery, where trout went to school from 
the day of their birth to their day of readiness 
for a frying-pan diploma. 

There was a hundred-and-fifty-foot tank built 
over the arena boxes, and here were contests 
in fly-casting. In the lake there were canoe 
races, water push-ball, log-rolling contests (poli- 
ticians and literary men barred) and water polo. 
In the basement there were contests in rifle and 
revolver shooting, and you could see a man shoot 
the ashes off another man's cigar at a distance 
of twenty-eight feet, and he complained that he 
was aiming with the wrong eye, as the right one 
had caught cold and was swollen shut. 

Here were shacks or tents for Nimrods, with 
beds of green boughs. Here the campfires of 
old guides from the Maine woods crackled along- 
side the booths of men offering for sale the new- 
est models of guns and powders and bullets — 
guns guaranteed to be so intelligent that they 



174 z\)c IReal IRew ^ov\\ 

will almost go out alone and bring in a rabbit 
for breakfast while the owner lies abed and 
watches it simmer on the self-lighting and self- 
regulating stove. There were exhibitions of 
utensils which fold up so completely that you 
can carry an entire outfit, including a tent and 
a small sailboat, in your waistcoat pocket. In 
your other waistcoat pocket you can tuck con- 
densed foods enough for a regiment; one pill 
warranted to make a Sandow out of you and 
keep you from wanting another for a week. 

In other parts of the Garden you will find elk 
and moose, very philosophical over their cap- 
tivity, in contrast with restless raccoons, wolves, 
foxes and wildcats. Some of the animals are 
stuffed; the rest are self-stuffing. 

In the centre lake there is sometimes an island 
where an almost pretty squaw tries to live up 
to the stories of poets who never saw an In- 
dienne. To this carnival gather all those who 
know one end of a gun from the other, and every 
huntsman or fisherman with a lie to swap. 

In the Garden in the summer there is Ven- 
ice. The centre of the arena is the Adriatic 
Sea or a circular Grand Canal. You can 
cross on a bridge or you can make the grand 
tour in a gondola with a human gondolier and 
some Italians who do barber's work by day 
and sing barber chords by night with much 
twittering of mandolins and a loud chanting of 
"Finiculi, Finicula." At one end of the Garden 



IHcvv ^ovWe 6art)cn of lE&cn 175 

is a large orchestra conducted by Mr. Duss, 
formerly a religious man from Economy, Pa. 
Besides plenteous music there are drinks. 

Last winter New York tried to be Athenian. 
The Garden was given over to a Physical Cul- 
ture Show, where men and women vied in con- 
tests of beauty for prizes, and got as near to 
Phryne's or Apollo's costume as St. Anthony 
Comstock allowed. It was a strangely pagan 
sight to see a woman clad almost like the Diana 
above her writhing and twisting to prove her 
corset - innocence. There were also powerful 
men writhing and twisting, with muscles fairly 
crawling all over them ; but the crowd thronged 
to the women, and I fear took it all as a naughty 
joke. 

In this same variety show, the Reverend 
John Alexander Dowie housed his caravan for 
a season of prayer and vituperation. He said 
he was the renovated Elijah, and he ought to 
know. But he made his first grand mistake 
in bringing a distinctly homely lot of women 
with him. How could he expect a mob of 
frumps to convert a town which will hardly sit 
up when a manager hurls upon the stage a 
tornado of show girls, shapely, sophisticated, 
and dressed in gowns that cost $500 apiece.? 
The man who would convert New York must 
look to the quality of his "ladies' auxiliary." 
Since the Christian Endeavor Society flooded 
the town with thousands of good but rural 



176 ^be IRcal IHcw ll?orh 

people, who went about staring and stared at, 
New York has never been so bored as it was 
by the Dowie inundation. Even the Cherry 
Sisters interested the town a longer while. 

It was in the Garden, during the Spanish 
War, that the Hon. John Lawrence Sullivan 
made one of his most Ciceronian orations. 
Neatly adapting a historic phrase addressed by 
Robert Fitzsimmons, Esq., to James Corbett, 
Gentleman, Mr. Sullivan advised Spain to "go 
git a repytation before she tackles a heavy- 
weight like U. S.," and signed himself ver- 
bally, "Yours truly, John L. Sullivan." 

It was in the Garden that Yousouf, "the 
Terrible Turk," met the American wrestler, 
Ernest Roeber, on a small platform, and, fail- 
ing to get his spidery claws on the wiry little 
Roeber, finally gave him a push that sent him 
headlong and head first off the boards to the 
ground. Roeber was carried out senseless, and 
the enormous crowd was furious. Then was 
seen one of the prettiest defiances ever handed 
to a mob by a single hero. Yousouf stood in the 
centre of the mat and executed a pas seul with 
all the bravado imaginable. 

The Metropolitan Opera House was chosen 
for their next bout. This ended in a free fight. 
And the Metropolitan stage, which had pre- 
viously seen nothing more deadly than grand 
opera duels between a tenor and a baritone, or 
fierce wrestling matches with the key, was dig- 




^^Y^^^ 



THE ARION BALL COMMITTEE 



IHcvv ^oxWe 6ar^cn of £i^cn 



t / 



iiified by a genuine shindy in which a dozen 
couples joined battle, to the delight of the police, 
who reluctantly interfered. It was this Yous- 
ouf who, on starting home to Turkey, would 
not trust American drafts, but had all his money 
in gold. He sailed on the Bourgogne, and when 
she sank, he sank, too, rather than let go his bag 
of coin. A strange visitor of sinister memory. 

The Garden is versatile enough to include 
everything from a w restling match to a religious 
revival, and on to a Fashion Show, where the 
styles are shown some months in advance. 
But the true fashion bazaars are two in num- 
ber: the Horse Show and the dark horse show. 
This latter is the annual Cake Walk and Car- 
nival of the cream of colored society — the 
chocolate cream, as it were. 

But most of the champion cakeists are gone 
now. They are in Europe delighting the aris- 
tocracy, turning the crowned heads kinky with 
envy, and teaching the bluest blood to circulate 
in ragtime while lords and ladies study hard to 
master the sinuous arts of what the French 
call the " kak-vak. " 

The Cake Walk in the Garden, however, fills 
but one night. The Horse Show fills a golden, 
glorious week. It is a yearly parade of horse- 
flesh and society flesh. The humorists annually 
make game of the Horse Show because the peo- 
ple themselves are the show and the horses only 

an excuse. As if any excuse that brouo:ht the 
12 ^ 



178 Zhc IRcal IRew ^ov\{ 

best pedigreed women and the best groomed 
men on parade were not a good excuse ! As if a 
filly from marble halls were not a better sight 
than any cob from Tattersall's! 

The true New Yorker always tries to get to 
the Horse Show at least once a year. He 
jostles along with the crowd of pedestrians, 
never looking at the quadrupeds in the ring, 
but frankly staring at the occupants of the box 
stalls. He makes no bones of halting before a 
group of society people, to note the good points 
of the women and inquire who they are. 

" Isn't that Miss Van Ilia .^" he asks a stranger. 

"No; that's Mrs. Jack Van Vanvan." 

In reality it is *'Mrs. Brown," but they are 
none the losers. They move on, only to halt 
again and exclaim: 

"Oh, there's Miss de Butante and the little 
Duke her father has just bought her. She 
ought to have got more for her money." 

And so they go the rounds, while the biped 
beauties whinny and neigh to their companions 
and pretend not to see that they are the subject 
of inspection. A genuine part of the Horse 
Show is the Waldorf-Astoria, whose corridors 
are packed all week with aristocrats from out of 
town and with people in town who stop there 
for dinner or supper. 

Then there is the new rival of the horse, the 
automobile; he, too, must have his show. He 
is noisier, smellier and more unruly, but a great 



IRcvv ^ovKb 6ai&cn of lEbcn i79 

toy for grown-ups that can afford to "see the 
wheels go round," can pay for breakages, and 
don't mind dust, grease and outre perfumes. 

Until a while ago New Year's Eve was always 
an occasion when one could "on with the dance, 
let joy be unrefined," for the costume riot of the 
French "Cercle de I'Harmonie" filled the Gar- 
den with revelry and emptied all the magnums 
and half the pocketbooks in town. It was very 
easy to be so happy that the puritanic police 
would carry you oft* to the station to convince 
you that "life is real, life is earnest, and the gaol 
may be its goal." 

The French ball is now replaced by a rather 
tawdry substitute called the "French Students," 
whose annual alumni reunion takes place at the 
so-called Grand Central Palace of Industry, 
which is neither grand nor central and has no 
suggestion of a palace nor of industry. 

But the Germans have survived their Gallic 
cousins, because there are more of them in New 
York. Their annual ball is the most gorgeous 
aft'air of its sort in town. 

The Arion Club fellows are so hospitable that 
once a year they rent Madison Square Garden 
at a cost of $1,900 for two days, one of which 
must be spent on the elaborate decorations. It 
is true that the affair nets a profit of from $6,000 
to $12,000, but the venture merits the profit, 
for great sums are spent on dressing the scene 
and in hiring and costuming the pageant and 



180 Zhc IRcal 1Hcw L^ork 

ballet. The Arioii is one of the events of the 
year, its chief rival being the ball of the Old 
Guard, i. e., the ex-members of the National 
Guard. These men wear a gorgeous uniform, 
with huge bearskin caps. The grand march is 
very impressive, as most of the guests don vari- 
ous military regalia and the women are in 
their brightest attire. For this event the whole 
orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera House is 
boarded over. 

To the Arion Ball went Joyce and Blake, 
dressed in their purest evening robes. They 
dined at their leisure and arranged to arrive at 
11.30. Under the colonnade, with its many pol- 
ished marble columns, a throng was edging into 
the doorway. At the box-offices mobs were 
struggling for admission at $10 per head, or for 
boxes at still higher prices. Inside the arena 
there was a newly erected barrier to cut off the 
dancing floor from the promenade. This bar- 
rier was composed of forty-four clusters of col- 
umns decorated with plants and flowers and 
connected by streamers of bunting. At inter- 
vals were large vases of flowers and tubs of 
palms. One hundred and twenty coats of ar- 
mor were held by caryatides and atlantes, and 
innumerable dolphins spouted bunting. 

Over the dance floor a canopy of gold was 
swung, and from it hung pendent electric globes 
smothered in flowers. In the centre a circular 
stairway of white and gold led up to a platform 



mew ^ovWb (Barbcit of i£i^cn isi 

over which was suspended an immense crown— 
Arion's own coronet. Electric lights by the 
thousand were fairly s})rinkled everywhere. Up 
near the roof was a press-room, where reporters 
and their friends could bathe in champagne and 
wallow in lobster salad. The journalist, Blake, 
smuggled Joyce in, and he did his best to get 
his gate-money's worth. 

All the rest of the building, except the space 
for the dancers or spectators, was one vast re- 
fectory of small tables, where liquid refresh- 
ments were devoured in appalling quantities. 

At a little before midnight the preliminary 
band concert ended, and trumpets heralded 
what the programme eloquently described as the 

GRAND SPECTACULAR PAGEANT 

Of artistically arranged groups, composed of historical 
characters of ancient and modern times, with over five 
hundred men and women in the costumes of the times 
and nations they represent, carrying out the general 
idea: 

The World Paying Homage to Arion. 

We see the various nations of ancient and modern 
times, their monarchs with suites of noblemen, pages, 
slaves, etc., in garments glittering with gold arid silver, 
diamonds and other precious stones, and of a splendor 
never before equaled in any spectacular production in 
this city. The costumes were especially designed for 
this occasion by Mr. Bolossy Kiralfy, and made under 
his instructions in Europe. For the different groups he 
selected the most beautiful women and the best adapted 
men obtainable for their respective characters. 



182 (ibc 1Rcal IRcw l?ork 

In this parade the Empress Theodora, with 
her Byzantine court, was followed by Monte- 
zuma and his Aztec train; Hernando Cortez and 
his Spaniards came on their heels, and next a 
languid Oriental princess in a palanquin with 
companions enough to fit out a dozen harems. 
A troop of bullfighters and Andalusian dancers 
preceded Harry the Fifth of England, with his 
knights and ladies. Then an African court with 
Amazons, ''pretty women of rarely fine shape," 
according to the dubious compliment of the 
programme. Finally came Arion himself and 
Prince Carnival with Columbia and a chorus of 
loud-voiced celebrants. "To signify the golden 
jubilee of the Arion Society, gold is in abundance 
in this group," said the programme, alluding, 
perhaps, to the fact that later the ballet ladies 
mingled among the audience and made mascu- 
line acquaintances with a keen business eye. 

When the long pageant had wound round 
and round the arena, Arion mounted his throne, 
and was crowned, while trumpets blared and 
the chorus made a loud noise, called a "jubilee 
hymn." Then the procession filed out again, 
and the proud Spaniards aided the Aztec super- 
numeraries in carrying off the heavy sections 
of the central platform. 

When the floor was cleared, a flood of ballet 
dancers reveled awhile, and 150 women united 
in long, leggy lines of kicking and swirling 
femininity. These were shoo'd off by clowns 



mow ^ovKe (Bavbcn of lebcu i83 

ten feet high. Then the floor was open to the 
pubHc. Here, and in the promenade, there 
flowed a curious mixture of all grades of society. 
Here the most famous beau in the country is 
elbowed by a little newspaper man made up as 
**Mr. Peewee. " There a prominent actor is 
begging the pardon of a staid German professor 
from one of the universities. The tenor who 
has been singing the blameless fool Parsifal to 
thousands of devout Wagnerians at the Metro- 
politan Opera, now stands on a chair and 
smokes a long black cigar, with much sophisti- 
cation. A gang of hilarious women proceed 
to play the flower-girl scene with him, and even 
Amfortas forgets his wound in the effort to save 
his friend — or to share his sport with a score 
of Kmidrys. 

Round about the promenade moves a Gulf 
Stream of men in evening dress, and of women 
(a few only in masks) ; some of these are in ball 
gowns, some in cowgirl suits or cowboy suits, 
in tights or Tyrolean skirts, or in anything 
rentable at a costumer's. Here a man in com- 
plete tramp disguise, with a *' Happy Hooligan" 
mask, is proud to win anonymous fame by 
cutting silly capers that bring a good-natured 
laugh. There, a girl tipsy before the proper 
hour, begins to cry and embrace the nearest man 
for sympathy. 

Some of the women are amazingly beautiful, 
while others, fat, forty and shapely as a ferry- 



184 



Z\)c IRcal IHcw ^ovU 




boat, are only amazing in their 
short skirts and their hippo- 
potamus efforts at coquettish- 
ness. A few German matrons 
lend a strange contrast till they 
grow sleepy and go virtuously 
home at half-past midnight. 
In the boxes and on the floor 
there is missing hardly one of 
the more successful women of 
the town. The richest of them 
fill the boxes, as if this were at 
a slave-mart, and with some of 
them at the back of the box 
sits a large negress, a 
servant, haughty in the 
pride of her establish- 
ment. On a table in each 
box is a rapidly growing 
pyramid of emptied 
champagne bottles. 
Here and there the members of the Arion 
Society who are on the floor committee are 
distinguished by caps made like great cock's 
combs, trimmed with gold spangles. It would 
be hard to say whether they make the tall or 
the short, the fat or the lean committeemen look 
the more ridiculous. 

The programme announces that " Masks must 
be removed after 1 o'clock a.m." Certain of 
the women interpret the order of removal very 



A BELLE OF THE 
ARION BALL 



IRcw ^ovWe iSnv^cn of JB^cn is5 

generously. More and more appears that in- 
variable accompaniment and inspiration of all 
Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon merrymaking — liquor. 
More and more the fumes of all this river of 
champagne rise and rule. But the surly drunk- 
ards are in the minority. Everyone is here for 
fun, and fun reigns as decorum flies. 

The visitors from out of town may feel lone- 
some at first, knowing no one, but introductions 
grow less and less necessary, and almost no 
w^oman who is unattached resists an arm about 
her waist and a rush for the dance floor. 

The Chicagoan was late in making up his 
mind which to choose. He soon lost Blake, who, 
being a newspaper man with supposed capabili- 
ties of giving away free "space," was smiled 
on by all the ambitious chorus girls and other 
stage parasites who have given the word ''ac- 
tress" a large and dubious scope. The women 
Joyce wanted were guarded by men bigger than 
he. Those wdio were loose looked usually a 
little too much so. Round and round he 
walked. At last, a pretty young woman in one 
of the boxes looked at him with a gleam as of 
surprise and recognition. He had never seen 
her before, but— well, he was from Chicago; 
he was not bashful. He lifted his hat, went to 
the rail, put out his hand, and said : 

"Who'd have thought of finding you here? 
So glad to see you again! Why aren't you 
dancing.?" 



186 



Z\K IRcal 1Hcw l^ork 



"I can't dance alone." 

''Come along at once!" He lent her a hand 
and she leaped over the rail to the floor. 

"How you have changed, Mr. 
Buxton!" she said. 

That wasn't his name, but he 
only smiled. "There is still room 
for improvement. But you look 
younger than ever." 

The dance was almost over when 
they began. So they were forced 
to take the next. She two- 
stepped so well that he 
said he knew she waltzed 
divinely. So they took a 
waltz. 

"The next will be 




IN THE PAGEANT 



another two-step," he 
said. So they two-stepped. Then came a 
quadrille. 

"I hate square dances," she cried. 

"And you must be thirsty," he ventured. A 
little later he said to a beaming and side- 
whiskery waiter, "A pint of champagne!" 

"Only quarts, monsieur." 

He was so flattered at being called " monsieur" 
that he made it quarts. "And some lobster 
salad." The salad lasted longer than the wine, 
so it must be another quart. Formality had 
vanished so completely that Joyce felt impelled 
to force a glass on the waiter, whom he called 



Wicw ^ovKe (5ar&cn of lE&cn is? 

"papa." The other couples in the dining-room 
seemed to be mostly engaged couples. 

The Chicagoan offered a little friendly em- 
brace to his companion. She repulsed it with 
magnificence. This made her far more inter- 
esting. He asked if he might call the next day 
to ''renew old acquaintance." She shyly an- 
swered ''Yes." He asked her to write her ad- 
dress in his book — he had a wretched memory. 

She wrote her name, of course — " Sarah Hunne- 
well." And so he learned it, the sly dog! Later, 
in response to a neatly worded hint, she told 
him that she was a newspaper woman. He told 
her he had read most of her articles. He loved 
literary women. Then he paid the bill and 
added a munificent tip. Then they danced some 
more. He kissed her once or twice in the thick 
of the crowd— but she evidently did not notice 
it. Then more thirst. 

"A pint of conversation water, papa," he said 
to their old waiter. 

"Only quarts, monsieur." 

"And some lobster salad." 

''Bon, monsieur.'' 

The engaged couples. in the room grew more 
and more demonstrative. Some of them surely 
must be married. But the newspaper woman 
preserved her modest dignity even when he said, 
a little thicklv: 

"When you're in rum, do as the rum 'uns do." 

She laughed, even longer than he thought the 



188 z\)c IRcal mew l^orh 

flash of wit deserved; but it was doubtless only 
nervousness. 

Finally she asked what time it was. 

''Only half-past four," he said. "The night 
is yet young." 

When the waiter had brought more inspira- 
tion she suddenly proposed a scheme. 

''Let's go out to Claremont for breakfast." 

She would listen to nothing but her own plan ; 
she was to go to her home and put on her day 
clothes; meanwhile he could go to his rooms 
and doff his evening splendors for a business 
suit. 

First a farewell dance. So he paid the waiter 
again; the large bill required a large tip. The 
floor was a scene of revel now, the most ingenu- 
ous love-making being interrupted by the foot- 
ball rushes of groups indulging in the can-can. 
The Chicagoan had his toes ground to a pulp, 
and his companion had the train of her gown 
torn off, but it was all matter only for laughter. 
At five o'clock the band, with brazen irony, 
played "Home, Sweet Home," and the lights 
began to go out. 

The scramble for coats and wraps was a good- 
humored riot, but at last they were in the re- 
freshing, if reproachful, morning air. He got 
a cab with some difficulty and drove to her ad- 
dress. She forbade him to come farther than 
the outer door. He thought he noticed the 
word "Manicuring" on a sign, but did not give 



IRcvv lJ)oiiV6 (5ar&cn of iB^cn iso 

it a second thought, lie drove to his hotel; the 
cabman's bill provoked him to a gasp of rage, 
but he preferred not to discuss the matter before 
the gaping porters and paid his duke's ransom. 
He flew to his room, threw off his clothes, looked 
sleepily at his unrufl^ed bed, threw on his busi- 
ness togs and sallied forth again. 

The newspaper woman was nearly ready and 
he hailed a hansom. The driver looked incred- 
ulous when he was ordered to go to "Clare- 
mont;" then he looked wise and said nothing. 

The streets were growing light and busy with 
traffic. The newspaper woman let him hold her 
hand; but, as he admitted to himself, that was 
rather tame deviltry. At length they reached 
Riverside Drive, and she was rapturous over the 
glories of sunrise reflected from the Palisades. 
But he w^as chiefly amazed by the heaviness of 
his eyelids and the uncomfortable tightness of 
his hat. 

Finally they arrived at the old colonial home- 
stead once occupied by Brother Joseph Bona- 
parte, temporary King of Spain. It was mod- 
eled and named after Lord Clive's place in 
Surrey, but now serves as a roadhouse of high- 
wayman expensiveness. The cabman drove up 
to the door. There was an ominous lifelessness 
about the place. Even the old-time ghosts had 
fled at cock-crow. The Chicagoan mounted the 
steps. The door was locked. A long pounding 
brought a resentful watchman. 



190 ^be IRcal IRew li)ork 

"Whatch yer want?" 

"Breakfast, you fool!" 

"Come back at half-past eight. The cooks 
don't get here for two hours." 

The Chicagoan looked at the cabman. 
He was trying to swallow a smile of guilty 

joy- 

"You knew it all the time." 

"I allers obeys orders, sir," said cabby. 

"Well, where can we get breakfast.^" 

"Childs's or Dennett's is open all night," said 
the mirthful cabby. 

"I'll break your head!" said the Chicagoan. 
" Drive back, slowly." 

The Chicagoan would rather have slept than 
have talked to the Czarina of Russia. But he 
must keep awake. The beauties of dawn 
eventually failed as a topic of conversation. 
The newspaper woman vainly tried to turn her 
yawns into little sighs of ennui. 

At last they found a restaurant. The cab- 
man made a staggering demand, and when Joyce 
protested he rattled off a list of distances and 
tariffs that hurt the Chicagoan's head. Then 
he offered to drive the couple to the police station. 
This adroit suggestion ended the argument. 
The Chicagoan peeled off the bills demanded. 
He saw to his dismay that he had just two dollars 
left. They entered the restaurant. 

All the chairs were piled on the tables; a 
waiter flicked a mop around their feet with un- 



IHcw ll)oi1Ve <5ar&cn of lEbcu loi 

veiled scorn. He could tell that they had been 
up all night. The Chicagoan, realizing that 
he had only two dollars with him, could not 
afford to be haughty. 

The newspaper woman began to suggest 
breakfast. 

"First, an eye-opener, eh .^ Then grape- 
fruit ? a little breakfast food and cream ? an 
omelette ? a steak smothered in mushrooms, 
some potatoes hashed in cream, some brandied 
peaches and some dainty wheat cakes ? And, 
of course, a pot of special coffee. How does that 
strike you .^" 

It struck the Chicagoan amidships and made 
his mouth water, but he thought of his two 
dollars. He usually ate a breakfast of dinner 
proportions, but he said: 

" Since I was in Paris I've always pre- 
ferred just coffee and rolls." 

His voice was husky with embarrassment, 
and besides he had caught a cold ! 

But the newspaper woman had not seen the 
two-dollar remnant. She ordered what she 
wanted. Joyce simply took coffee — and stole 
one of her rolls. The bill was $1.95. The 
Chicagoan found in his pockets thirty-five cents 
in silver. He gave the waiter $2.25, leaving 
his assets ten cents, his liabilities — ? 

When they left the restaurant the newspaper 
woman said: "There's our old cabby. We can 
call him again." 



192 



Zhc mal mcvv l^orh 



"The street-cars are quicker," said the 
Chicagoan, in a desperate tone. 

So they fought their way on to a crowded car. 
She got a strap, and he clung desperately to the 
platform. When they reached her door she 
told him good-bye and bade him call again. 

He promised in a hoarse and raw-throated 
voice, and she flitted cheerily up the stairs. As 
he turned away he thought it over. 

**I got two kisses and a bad cold, and it cost 
me only $65. But what's the odds.^ It's a 
pleasure to meet a real literary person." 

He glanced cheerfully back over his shoulder — 
his left shoulder — and staggered as he read in 
the clear light of day this little sign: 



; Miss Hunnew^ell, ! 
; Manicuring. ! 





AFTER THE BALL 



Chapter X^ 

DOWNTOWN BOSTON VS. NEW YORK THE FARMER AND 

THE SCHOOLMARM COME TO TOWN THE BROADWAY 

CROWD — A TALL BUILDING — A CITY UNDER ONE ROOF 

THE RISKS OF MODERN CITY LIFE "NEWSPAPER ROW " 

THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE CITY HALL PARK A MON- 
UMENT TO BOSS TWEED THE TOMBS PRISON THE 

CRIMINAL COURT HOUSE THE POST-OFFICE CROOKED 

ALLEYS DOWNTOWN 

THE man from Boston had met De Peyster 
looking over the tape from a stock 
ticker. They walked along together. The 
man from Boston was theoretically democratic, 
so he was willing to risk being seen with a 
New Yorker, especially as it gave him an op- 
portunity to indulge in his local custom; for the 
typical Bostonian will never say anything mean 
about a man behind his back; he saves it to tell 
him to his face. 

He was informing De Peyster what a horrible 
hole New York is, after all — nothing but com- 
mercialism, no Copley Square architecture, no 
music, no "Pops," no Kneisel Quartet, no 
Back Bay, no Faneuil Hall, no decent beans, 
no culture. 

De Peyster retorted with gay condescen- 
sion: "Boston is a tame, old, blue-goggly vil- 



194 ^be IReal IHcw l^oift 

lage, a sort of home for aged and indignant 
women of both sexes, with a proportion of one 
old fogy to two old maids, neither of them good- 
looking and both ill dressed. As for Boston 
culture, it is of the Bunthorne and Lady Jane 
type. Besides, Boston is now only the ' hub ' of 
a fifth wheel. It is no longer even a literary 
centre, for all the literary men have moved to 
New York, except two, and one of those is Bar- 
rett Wendell. Boston's noblest contribution 
to the world of art has been John L. Sullivan." 

The academic debate was broken off short by 
the Bostonian. 

" Good Lord ! there goes the farmer that saved 
our train from wreck." 

"What a memory you have!" said De Peyster. 

"I'm from Boston." 

"I forgot; Boston is nothing but a memory." 

They joined the increasing knot of people who 
were following the farmer. It takes an unusual 
make-up to attract notice in New York, but 
Silas had it. He looked as if he had stepped 
out of a musical comedy. 

At his side was a little, roly-poly apple dump- 
ling of a woman, who was pretty in spite of her 
old-fashioned togs. The little woman was try- 
ing to remember that her copy of "Don't!" had 
said, " Don't stare," but Silas was all agape; even 
his wide mouth stared like a huge Cyclops eye. 

"Shall we speak to him .^" asked De Peyster. 
But the Bostonian answered, severely: 



Downtown ^^'> 

"I don't see why 1 should speak to a man 
just because he saved my life. Besides, 1 gave 
him a tip for it." 

He dragged De Peyster into a convenient cafe 
— in New York there is usually a convenient cafe. 

Then Joyce came strolling along, killing a 
little time. He saw the farmer, and the crowd 
after him. He thought of retreating, but his 
sense of gratitude was not yet frittered away, 
and, advancing, he introduced himself. Silas 
was overwhelmed with joy at finding a friend 
in this blizzard of strange faces swirling round 
him. He said: 

"Mr. Joyce, shake hands with Miss Primrose; 
Miss Primrose, shake hands with Mr. Joyce. 
Miss Primrose is the school-teacher down our 
way. When I got that money fer savin' the 
train an' decided to take a trip to New York, 
I says to her, * You better pack yer duds, Sally, 
an' come along,' s'l. An' come she did. Folks 
down our way says we're engaged. I ain't sayin' 
ez we are an' I ain't sayin' ez we are." 

Miss Primrose was blushing like a snow-apple 
and Joyce's fingers twitched to tweak her most 
pinchable cheeks. But Silas broke in: 

" Oh, say, like's not you k'n tell a feller haow 
fur it is to git to Broadway street!" 

"Your foot is covering a large portion of it 
now," said Joyce. 

"You mean to tell me thet this here street 
is thet there Broadway street I've hearn tell of 



196 ^be IRcal IRew ^ov\{ 

s'long? Lan' o' Goshin! if 't'd 'a' be'n a snake 
't'd 'a' 'bit my fool foot off 'fore naow. Well, 
well, well! so we're on Broadway street at last! 
Jes' see the peepil!" 

"Looks like church was lettin' out of every 
buildin'," ventured Miss Primrose, with delicious 
timidity. 

"An' them streets — looky at 'em! Why, Paw- 
paw Center on Fourth o' July ain't a patch on 
it. What's the special occasion, mister, an' 
where's all these peepil goin' so goldurn fast.^" 

"Oh, it's just the ordinary crowd," said Joyce. 
"It's like this every day." 

"Go on! Ain't enough peepil in the world 
to keep up a gait like this long. They'd jest 
naturally give out. And would you looky at 
them teams — and street cars — where's the trol- 
ley ? — underground ? Go on, you can't fool me! 
Honest ? W'l, I'll be durned ! 

"But, speakin' about craowds, a feller on the 
train tol' me they was a feller once tried to cross 
Broadway, an' it was so golblame packed he 
stood on the sidewalk an' waited twenty-four 
haours, an' when finally he made a beeline, gol- 
durned if a street car an' a brewery truck didn't 
both git him! 

"Goshblame my punkin seeds, if it don't 
look like a million sardine boxes was spillin'! 
An' my feet are so sore walkin' on stone. Gee 
whiz! ain't they no board walks in this 
town ?" 




Downtown 197 

"What do you think of the tall 
buildings ?" said Joyce. 

"Ta-all? Why, if you piled aour 
caounty court haouse on top o' the 
bank buildin' an' the Bap- 
tis' church atop o' that, an' 
then stuck Josh Bonstall's 
new red barn on the steeple 
fer good measure, 'twould- 
n't more'n make a foun- 
FROM THE TWENTIETH FLOOR datlou for ouc of thcsc hcrc 

skys weepers o' yourn. 
Fust one I see, I leaned so durned fur back 
tryin' to see plum to the top of it that I fell 
over back'ards." 

"Chicago is the town that put up the first 
skyscrapers," said Joyce, proudly; "but New 
York is a close second now. Would you like 
to go to the top of one of them ? ' ' 

Silas looked dubiously at Miss Primrose, 
hoping that she would be afraid; but she was 
game, and he did not dare to show his fear. 
Joyce led them to the American Tract Society 
Building in Nassau Street. Silas said, anx- 
iously : 

"Don't these things ever fall over.^ Kind o' 
like livin' in a chimbley flue." 

Joyce led them to the elevators and chose an 
express. The door slammed shut, and the 
elevator man made an extra fast start for the 
benefit of the visitors. As the car shot upward 



198 ^be IRcal mew ^ov]\ 

at the rate of 700 feet a minute, both Silas and 
Sally sat down hard, or rather the car brought 
their feet up against their spines with a jolt. 
They looked, seared and rose with difficulty. 
They had experienced one of the new^est sensa- 
tions science has given to man. 

''Feels like bein' blowed up by a bomb," said 
Si. " Hope I don't come daown in pieces." 

The car came to a short stop, and Joyce led 
his bewildered guests out to another elevator 
that went still higher. On the twenty-second 
story was a restaurant in which the prices are 
not so aerial as its nest. The visitors declined 
with deep earnestness Joyce's suggestion that 
they put any food into their dismayed interiors. 
The landscape was the most substantial thing 
they could stomach. 

In this place the meek-salaried clerk can take 
his lunch and gaze out on a view that Cheops 
might have envied for all his pyramid. The 
map of the region was as plain as from a balloon. 
To the west the Hudson, here called the North 
River, flowed into the bay, and across its 
crowded current the Jersey cities rose, and far 
back of them one could see to the Orange 
Mountains. In the bay a huge 13,000-ton 
ocean liner was pushing out and another edging 
in. Liberty rose in all her pride; round her 
were anchored the tramp steamers of the coast, 
the unloaded ones showing a wide margin of 
red hull, the others weighted deep with 



©owntown i^^ 

merchandise for South America and the 
Indies. 

Governor's Island, with its garrison, lay like 
an emerald on the blue bay. To the west, Long 
Island Sound, here called the East River, 
swerved round, cutting off the crowded plains 
and hills of Brooklyn. 

From here the Brooklyn Bridge revealed the 
majesty of its grace, a rainbow of steel, its great 
cables draped like festal ornaments and giving 
no hint that all this multitude of crowded trains 
and almost continuous cars w^as hung from their 
strength. Far to the north rose the Williams- 
burg Bridge, an ugly mechanism in contrast with 
the noble towers and the epic sweep of the Brook- 
lyn Bridge, that most beautiful of the world's 
bridges, though the High and the Washington 
Bridires across the Harlem are almost as fair to 

see. 

At this moment a warship was issuing from 
the Navy Yard. It w^as one of the veterans of 
the White Squadron, so swanlike and snowy 
that one could not believe it had spouted de- 
struction off Santiago. 

To the north lay, mile on mile, the multi- 
tudinous roofs of Manhattan, clear-cut under 
the clear sky in the clear air. Mute at this dis- 
tance, its streets were ravines, its infinite towers 
peaks crowded together to the dim crag of the 
Flatiron, and on, on beyond. Not the least of 
the triumphs of the city's Board of Health has 



200 Zhc IRcal mew l^orh 

been its crusade in favor of hard coal. Joyce 
alone, from his soft-coal smudge of Chicago, 
could rate at its true value the absence of black 
clouds of smoke. So far as the eye could reach 
the air was undefiled of soot. Only here and 
there little jets of steam wavered into nothing- 
ness — the beautiful white plumes of New York. 
When Silas and Sally had oh'd and ah'd their 
hearts out over the Pisgah-sight of the Promised 
Land, the practical, the statistical Joyce brought 
them back to facts. He pointed out other tall 
buildings — the American Surety Company's 
tower, of just the same height as theirs, 306 feet; 
the Commercial Cable, twenty-one stories high; 
the Potter Trust, 293 feet high; the St. Paul, of 
twenty-six stories or 308 feet; the twenty-two- 
story Pulitzer, or World Building, with its gold 
dome, once a landmark from afar, now lost in 
the giant forest ; and the twin-towered Park Row, 
of twenty-nine stories, the highest inhabited 
building in the world, the top of the flagstaff be- 
ing 447 feet from the ground, its foundations 75 
feet below that. Its weight is 40,000,000 pounds. 
It contains 950 offices, 2,080 windows and 3,500 
tenants. Its elevators carry 48,860 persons a 
week, yet one of the car starters knows the floor 
and room of every one of its tenants. Its annual 
rental is $318,010, its operating expenses $141,- 
235 a year. The building and the land cost 
$4,000,000. The Broad Exchange, though only 
286 feet high, has the largest floor space in the 



Bowntown 201 

world— 27,000 square feet on each of its twenty 
stories, each of wliich measures 236x106 feet, witli 
a 100-foot wing. It cost $7,500,000. 

Joyce exphiined that some of these buildings 
are cities in themselves, with populations of 
thousands each, and almost all the industries of 
a city, including libraries, notaries, barber shops, 
restaurants, flower shops, news-stands, confec- 
tioners, doctors, bankers, tailors, special police, 
safe deposit vaults, telegraph oflSces, water 
works and light plants. 

The Manhattan Life has its own artesian well; 
the Metropolitan Life draws its water from a 
stream, now covered, that once ran from Madi- 
son Square to the East River. In many of them 
there have been even graver problems of engi- 
neering than the construction of those ''steel 
bridges stood on end " which America has con- 
tributed to the history of architecture, and for 
which Europe has revived the epithet Cyclo- 
pean. The foundations of many of them go 
down seventy-five feet or more, those of the 
Commercial Cable reaching one hundred and 
six feet below the surface, the engineer's room 
being forty feet under the sidewalk. Quicksands 
have furnished a puzzle for many and almost 
doubled the cost of certain structures. The 
American Surety rests on subterranean columns, 
these on piers and these on caissons reaching to 
the eternal bedrock. Here a cantilever has been 
employed to shift some of the weight of the 



202 zbc IRcal t\c\v ^ov\\ 

outer walls toward the centre. The Standard 
Oil Building, at No. 26 Broadway, was originally 
nine stories high. When it was decided to add 
six more it was felt that the old walls would not 
stand the added weight, and it was found nec- 
essary to buy a lot to the north and erect there 
a steel building with a cantilever projecting over 
the old walls, and on this were hung the six new 
stories. 

When the Mutual Life wished to add an an- 
nex costing $2,500,000 it was necessary to un- 
derpin an eighteen-story neighbor so perfectly 
as not to disturb the vaults of a safe deposit 
company therein; its locks would have been set 
fast had the walls settled the sixteenth of an 
inch. 

The rapidity with which these steel mushrooms 
spring up is astounding; the stone or brick walls 
being used only as a sheath and not for support, 
they are hung on the steel frame; consequently 
one may see the stone masons at work on the 
third and tenth stories before the second and 
the ninth are touched. They may be lathing 
and plastering one story while the outer walls 
of the one below it are being added. 

In spite of the genius of the engineers, the 
problem of wind pressure is not yet solved, and, 
for all their strength, some of these buildings 
vibrate in a storm until water is shaken in a 
bowl and pendulum clocks are stopped. But 
they are believed to be none the less safe for 



downtown 203 

this; and the highest offices are in no less de- 
mand than those nearer the ground. 

The imagination shivers at the tliought of fire 
at these heights; but, while many lives have 
been lost in three-story dwelhngs, no one has 
yet been burned to death above the fifteenth 
story, and the few fires that have assailed these 
structures have usually died in the floor of their 
origin. 

Courage, like everything else, is a matter of 
custom, and were Achilles revived to-day he 
would flee in hinnulean terror from conditions 
before which the most flebile stenographer of 
to-day does not blink. Indeed, the very cross- 
ing of a street where trolleys hustle, huge trucks 
rumble and automobiles snarl would doubtless 
set the fierce-hearted Greek to wishing again 
for the tame delights of his daily calisthenics be- 
fore the walls of Troy. 

The wonders of our sky scraping civilization 
are impressive enough to the most blase city 
mouse; to Silas, fresh from the farm, and Sally, 
just from the village school, they were stupefac- 
tion. They could think only of the Tower of 
Babel and wonder when the Lord would curse 
the city with the confusion of tongues. When 
later they visited the East Side they found the 
curse in full operation. 

At length Joyce consented to take them back 
to terra firma. They stepped timidly into the 
express elevator, remembering their former sen- 



204 z\K 1Rcal mew l?orft 

sations; but the previous skyrocket leap was 
nothing to the sickening drop. Si and Sally 
clasped each other as in a dying embrace. When 
they reached the end of the drop they were 
amazed to find themselves still alive, but their 
souls were full of nausea. 

''Feel 'zif I'd left my stummick up on the 
roof," said Silas. 

Joyce explained the system of automatic 
clutches meant to stop the cars in case of acci- 
dent and the air wells that offer a pneumatic 
cushion as a last resort. 

But Silas was still somewhat shaky about the 
knees. 

" S'posin' everything broke, what ought a fel- 
ler to do.^" he asked, anxiously. 

"Just before you strike bottom jump up in 
the air and click your heels together," said Joyce. 
''Then you'll have only two feet or so to fall." 

"Good idee! if a feller could think of it — and 
do it," said Silas. 

Joyce pointed out to them the clusters of 
newspaper buildings round Printing House 
Square — the Sun (in the original Tammany 
Hall building); the Journal and the Tribune 
strangely consorting together; the World, the 
Press, the Globe, the Siaats-Zeitu7ig, the N ew 
Yorker Herold. The Evening Post and the 
Mail are not far away, though the Times and 
the Herald have fled north, as eventually all 
will do. All day these caldrons of "News- 



2)OVV!ltO\Vn 205 

paper Row" pour forth clouds of editions, and 
lawless mobs of newsboys, crying "Waxty! 
liuxty! hexty! wexty!" — anything but ''extra!" — 
fight over any stranger who carries his hand to 
his pocket. From this hub carts and automo- 
biles go racing northward to the upper centres 
and to the trains with every edition. 

Here are the bulletin boards where the re- 
turns from prize-fights, ball games, yacht races 
and other events are posted. In election times 
the whole square is one viscous mass of be- 
ribboned and campaign - buttoned humanity, 
cheering or booing the news from various re- 
mote districts, laughing at the caricatures or 
the moving pictures interlarded for entertain- 
ment between telegrams, and keeping up a 
pandemonium of tin horns and rattles and good 
nature, however the issue may waver. 

In this square are the statues of those two old 
journalists, Benjamin Franklin and Horace 
Greeley; the statue of the latter, by J. Q. A. 
Ward, being a work of real charm, though an- 
other statue of the same man in Greeley Square 
at Thirty-third Street is one of the worst atroci- 
ties in the city. 

Joyce took them for a little walk out on the 
promenade of Brooklyn Bridge, through the 
crowds that fought for places on the various 
cars, though at this hour they could not see the 
ferocious struggle for life that goes on at the 
evening rush hour. The countryfolk found it 



-^06 ^be IRcal IRcw ^ov\{ 

impossible to believe that this great causeway 
could be thus hung in midair by ropes strung 
across two piers. They grew dizzy looking 
down upon the boats 135 feet below, and 
sickened at that mighty forward movement one 
feels on a bridge, trembling at the little in- 
sistent temptation to jump. They held each 
other's hands for mutual security. 

Joyce told them all the statistics of the thirteen 
years (1870-1883), and the fifteen million dollars 
spent on the bridge, with subsequent charges 
costing six millions more. The centre span 
between the 278-foot towers is 1,595 feet long^ 
next to the longest span in the world. The 
total lengtli of the bridge is 6,537 feet, about a 
mile and a quarter. The cables are 13f inches 
thick, each made of 5,'296 steel wires, each wire 
capable of holding 3,400 pounds; in length they 
make a total of 3,515 miles wrapped with 243 
miles. Each cable is 3,578^ feet long; and is 
anchored in a great mass of masonry weighing 
1,000,000 pounds. Each of the four cables 
weighs 6,800,000 pounds, and will support 
12,000 tons. Thousands of trolley cars cross 
every day, and the daily number of passen- 
gers is 200,000. 

The Williamsburg Bridge is a little longer 
and cost only $12,000,000, but it will never 
have the beauty of this bridge, which has 
long been considered one of the wonders of the 
world. New York should have twenty more 



Downtown 



207 



bridges — and will, in time — but sj)anning these 
wide, swift, deep channels is very different from 
throwing an arch across the many - bridged 
Seine or the narrow Thames. This is proved by 
the fact that the two bridges now built have the 
longest spans in the world. 

Proud in his importance as guide, Joyce 
piloted his dumfounded clients back into City 
Hall Park, where they found some restoration 
of balance in the sight of trees and grass — as rare 
to New Yorkers as the other wonders to the 
rurals. But they were too much upset by the 
titanic neighborhood to appreciate the rare 
beauty of the City Hall, once a building of civic 
glory — when the town was smaller — now an ob- 
ject of almost tiny charms, like a miniature 
temple in a Japanese toy garden. But small 
as it is, it is the delight of architects and con- 
noisseurs; though its cupola is an inferior 
restoration of the original, which was 
burnt during the fireworks festival over 
the laying of the Atlantic Cable 
in 1858. 

City Hall is all of white 
marble, except the rear wall, 
which is of freestone, as it was 
not thought worth while spend- 
ing marble on the poor trash 
that would live farther north. 
It was in 1812 that Architect 
John McComb's plans were 




IN THE ASTOR LIBRARY 



208 z]x IRcal mew l^orft 

thus finished. To-day City Hall is far down- 
town and the city limits are sixteen miles 
north. The design of the building is supposedly 
based on Inigo Jones's plans for the Whitehall 
Palace, of which the Banqueting House alone 
was built. Classic ratios and proportions dis- 
tinguish this work, and its columns especially 
are perfect. 

Nearby stands the memorial statue of 
Nathan Hale, one of the earliest martyrs of 
independence, a young, twenty-one-year-old 
school-teacher forced to act as a spy, and be- 
trayed by his notes in Latin. Every American 
knows the story of his execution in the apple 
orchard that stood on the spot now known as 
First Avenue and Forty-fifth Street. Every 
American knows his death-words: "I regret that 
I have but one life to lose for my country." 
There exists no portrait of Nathan Hale, and the 
sculptor, Frederick Macmonnies, has been free 
to represent his ideal of the American face. He 
has achieved a distinct type, not Greek, Roman, 
French or English, but American. 

Inside City Hall are Washington's desk and 
table and many other relics. Back of City Hall 
— across the politicians' haunt known as "Hand- 
Shaking Alley" — is the County Court House, for 
which " Boss " Tweed charged the city $12,000,- 
000— $3,000,000 of it for plastering. The 
exposure of this deal cost him his throne. To 
the east stood till recently the dingy Hall of 




'^^^er^ 



AROUND THE TICKER 



Downtown 



209 



Records, built in 1762 and used by the English 
in the Revolutionary War as a place for starv- 
ing American prisoners — a rival of the horrible 
prison ship that floated in the waters nearby. 
A new Hall of Records is 
nearly finished and plans are 
on foot for building one 
great central municipal struc- 
ture of magnificent propor- 
tions, one that will vie with 
the stature of the business 
blocks. 

Another disappearance is 
the old Tombs prison, which 
was genuinely picturesque 
and gruesome in its thor- 
oughly Egyptian style. It 
is replaced by a modern structure a short 
distance north of City Hall and is connected by 
a "bridge of sighs" with the Criminal Courts 
Building, where the visions of misery are relieved 
by the superb mural decorations of Edward Sim- 
mons — well worth going to jail to see. 

This building covers ground once filled with 
the pond called the Collect, a famous fishing and 
skating resort, where George IV was almost 
drowned while skating as a middy, and where, 
in 1789, John Fitch made the first successful 
voyage with a model steamboat. 

Joyce led his footsore visitors next to the Post- 

Office, a building of unusual design and not half 
14 




NEW YORKER 



210 ^be IRcal IRcw ^ov\\ 

so hideous as many of its critics pretend. Its 
real fault is its inadequacy to the needs of New 
York, whose miserable postal service is far be- 
hind that of most American towns and still 
farther behind the splendidly quick services of 
Paris and of London. Yet the New York Post- 
Office is one of the few in the United States that 
shows a profit in its annual twelve million dollars 
of income from its ten million pieces of mail 
matter handled every day. 

Opposite it is the tame old hostelry, the Astor 
House, once as famous throughout the country 
as the New York Weekly Tribune. Joyce led 
his little army down Nassau Street, narrow and 
twisting as are few of New York's streets and 
most of London's. In this shadowy gorge, with 
its alternative of skyish shafts and old rookeries 
filled with old bookeries, everyone walks in the 
roadway. This is one of the few districts 
where it is possible for even the most stupid 
stranger to lose his way. 



Chapier XI 



MONEY THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE THE CLEARING 

HOUSE THE SUB-TREASURY THE STOCK EXCHANGE 

THE PRODUCE EXCHANGE THE WHEAT PIT 

FRAUNCES'S TAVERN 



AT Liberty Street Joyce turned aside to 
show them the Chamber of Commerce, 
the white marble palace of an association of mer- 
chants organized in 1768 and devoted to the 
expansion of commerce. Its famous annual 
banquets are held in a great hall ninety feet long 
and sixty feet wide and thirty feet high. On 
its walls is a gallery of the portraits of the great 
merchants who have heaped up the spoils of 
peace. 

But when he turned into Cedar Street and 
pointed out the gleamingly beautiful temple of 
finance, the Clearing House, Silas and Sally were 
less overwhelmed by the poetic glow of R. W. 
Gibson's noble design than by Joyce's statement 
that it had cost $1,120,000 to build, and that it 
serves as a sort of cheque exchange, where the 
money due from each bank is taken from the 
money due to it and the difference paid by 
cheque or cash, the average daily clearings 
amounting to $230,000,000— forty-five per cent. 



212 ^be IReal IRcw IDorh 

more than those of London. In one day, May 
10th, 1901, $598,537,409 changed hands under 
its soaring dome. 

Joyce led on to Wall Street, hardly so much a 
street as an institution, a name of world-wide 
omen. Here is the Sub-Treasury, a branch of 
the United States Mint. Sometimes $225,000,- 
000 in actual coin are stored in this stone fortress, 
built for siege, and armed with three Gatlings 
and other weapons, including hand-grenades, to 
be dropped from various loopholes. 

All millions look alike to the average mind, 
and once the sixth cipher has been added a few 
units more or less make no impression on the 
benumbed intellect. The jaws and eyes of 
Silas and Sally had fallen as far as possible with- 
out ripping, at the first flight into the higher 
numerals. What more Joyce told them was 
hardly understood or felt. 

They were less interested in his statement that 
the Sub-Treasury had cashed cheques for sums 
as high as $30,000,000 than in learning why the 
calves of the heroic bronze Washington were all 
glistening, though the rest of him was dull. 
Joyce was forced to ask a passer-by, who told him 
that the newsboys playing tag about the pedestal 
had worn their country's father's stockings shiny. 

It was on this very spot, when New York was 
the capital of the United States, that Washing- 
ton took the oath of office, April 30, 1789, as 
the first President. Little he could have thought 



flDouc? 



213 



that in a hundred and twelve years the shaky 
Httle federation, with its bin full of trouble and 
empty of money, would become a world power 
and New York City the financial centre of the 
globe. How he would have relished at Valley 
Forge, or during the mutiny of 
unpaid officers, some of those 
millions of coin on which he 
turns his back to-day ! 

Next door is the still older 
building, the Assay Office, a 
sort of magic dairy where they 
make cheeses of solid silver and 
skim off the cream of molten 
gold. Joyce took the rurals 
within and reveled in the hyp- 
notism that came over them in gazing at heaped- 
up slabs of the precious yellow. Silas was per- 
mitted to handle one bar worth $7,000. He 
patted it fondly and sighed: 

"So this is one of them gold bricks I'm al- 
ways readin' about! Gosh! I'd like to own 




A NEW 
YORKER 



one. 



A little later he did. It was sold to him on a 
side street at a great bargain by an obliging gen- 
tleman who needed a little ready money. 

From this home of real money Joyce led Silas 
and Sally to the cyclone centre of auriferous 
winds, the Stock Exchange, where men grow 
fabulously rich or plunge into direst bank- 
ruptcy without seeing or touching so much as a 



214 Zbc 1Rcal IRcw I^orh 

ten-dollar bill; often with no more sign of 
triumph or disaster than a nod of the head and 
a penciled memorandum in a pocket notebook. 

Joyce had secured a card of admission to the 
Visitors' Gallery from a broker who had bought 
what they call a "seat"; that is, he had paid 
$75,000 for the privilege of standing up in a 
frantic mob and joining in a continuous college 
yell and cane rush from 10 to 3 every day. 

The new building of the Stock Exchange is a 
palatial affair, with its Greek columns and 
colossal pediment group. It is in New Street 
now, but it still means Wall Street to the nation. 
As the three went up in the elevator to the Vis- 
itors' Gallery Silas said, with all the rapture of 
one born inland : 

"The ocean must be nearby. Listen, Sally; 
you can hear the roar of the breakers." 

"No; that's the roar of the brokers," said 
Joyce. 

They stepped into the gallery opening on the 
lofty and brilliant amphitheatre of multi-colored 
marbles. Everywhere little messengers were 
flashing like minnows in a disturbed pool. 
Numberless telephone bells were tingling like 
mad. On one of the walls little blackboards 
were falling silently and closing mysteriously 
again, showing for a moment various numbers — 
signals to individual members that they are 
wanted at the door. On the walls only was 
silence, and at the huge windows, where floods 



flDoncv^ 215 

of light poured In on a scene of Bacchic orgy. 
On the floor, littered with papers and raucous 
humanity, were little posts carrying legends like 
cross-road signboards. Some of these were 
deserted. Round others there was a merry 
hullabaloo of screaming, shrieking, jumping, 
hysterical mankind shaking their fingers in one 
another's face. A hundred auctioneers were 
barking their wares madly in one another's teeth. 

"Gosh! there's goin' to be a terrible fight," 
said Silas. "Why don't they call in the police 
or the militia .^" 

Joyce explained that the men were all the best 
of friends, amiably trying to o^ii each other's 
financial throats. Practical jokes and bank- 
ruptcy alternated. An absent-minded member 
strolled on in a tall hat — he was due a little later 
at an afternoon tea. A gang of millionaires for- 
got their dazzling profits and proceeded to smash 
the hat over his ears, then wrenched it loose and 
played football with it. 

A quiet individual sauntered to one of the 
deserted signboards and suddenly went insane. 
He began to yell at the top of his voice. The mob 
forgot its football and rushed upon him, not to 
restrain his frenzy but to catch it and howl him 
down, like a pack of wolves. Joyce tried to ex- 
plain it, but his talk of bulls and bears and lambs 
only mystified them. 

"I've heard of live stock," said Silas, "but 
that's the liveliest stock I've saw outside 



216 Zhc IReal IHcw l^orfe 

of the time three of our caows got the hydro- 
phoby." 

Joyce then turned to a discussion of margins, 
covering shortages, being long of the market and 
other terms more bewildering than Coptic, since 
the very simplicity of the terms made their tech- 
nical meanings more cryptic. He tried to show 
how this crowd of men, this money club, had 
the purse of the nation in its clutch — greediness 
or crime or conspiracy here affects the prosperity 
of every man in the country. Finally Miss Prim- 
rose said : 

"All I know is I've got a headache and I'd 
like to go somewhere and cry!" She was revived 
by the air in the slim street, crowded with men 
and with rarely a sign of horse or vehicle. 

A visit to the Produce Exchange might be 
more understandable, Joyce thought, and he took 
them to the monstrous barracks in Whitehall 
Street, wdiere the arena is larger than any other 
save Madison Square Garden. Here three thou- 
sand members handle an annual business of a 
billion dollars. On this wide floor, with its long 
sample-tables and other conveniences, a man 
may receive a cable ordering a shipload of wheat ; 
without leaving the floor he can buy the wheat, 
rent an elevator, hire a ship, insure the cargo, 
sell his exchange and cable back his prices and 
the date of arrival. 

Silas understood a little more of this, and the 
oval "wheat pit" meant much to him, for here 



fIDoncp 



217 



met the friends and enemies of his ideal of "dol- 
lar wheat" in deadly wrestle day by day. The 
struggles here over flour, lard, butter, cheese, 
seed, hay and other provisions were struggles for 
or against his own prosperity, but the total out- 
puts of his daily battle with soil and season were 
so petty in comparison with the masses tossed 
about in this place that he grew wroth. 

'*I bet nary one of them dudes knows which 
end of a hoe is the handle, and couldn't tell bar- 
ley from beans; but they kin make or break me 
with a few yelps. Listen to them pups tryin' to 
holler down the price of lard. How do they 
reckon I'm goin' to pay off my mortgage ?'' 

Silas was tempted to whip off his coat and 
descend in person. But Joyce and Sally per- 
suaded him out of the 
zone of excitement, 
and a visit to the 
tower with the sweep- 
ing view of the waters thick 
with hurrying ships and the 
streets black with human 
ants desperately intent on 
the problems of wealth, 
lifted him from the indi- 
vidual to the general, made 
him feel trivial as a single 
being, yet exultant as a unit 
in this mighty cosmic ma- 
chinery. 




the chart expert 
'change 



ON 



218 



the IReal IWcw ^ov\\ 



From the Produce Exchange they strolled to 
the nearby Fraunces's Tavern, built in 1730 and 
opened as an inn by Samuel Fraunces in 1762. 
On the second floor they stood awestruck in 
the long room, where, on Evacuation Day in 
1783, when the last British soldier had marched 
away forever, the Continental oflScers gathered 
to celebrate the victory of their seven years' 
warfare. They had been less happy over their 
triumph than sad over the end of their sacred 
comradeship in the cause of freedom. In this 
room Washington wept as he bade good-bye to 
his officers. 

And there was an impulse to tears in the 
Americans of to-day in the very atmosphere of 
the hallowed place. Our ancestors are not so 
far away from us as those of other nations, but 
their memory is dear and their benefits not yet 
forgot. 




Chapter XII 



CLUBLAND HOW TO GET INTO A NEW YORK CLUBHOUSE 

VARIOUS TYPES OF CLUB POLITICAL, RELIGIOUS, 

COLLEGE, women's, GREEK LETTER FRATERNITIES, 

TRADES, CRAFTS, PROFESSIONS ATHLETIC CLUBS 

LITERARY, BOHEMIAN AND SOCIAL CLUBS CLUB- 
WINDOW LIFE SOME ODD CLUBS CLUBLAND'S NEW 

CENTRE 



FROM the cradle to the ckibs. Everybody 
in New York joins a club, man, woman, 
child. Indeed, if Wordsworth's "Ode on the 
Intimations of Immortality" is true, we have but 
come into this planet from an older and earlier 
club life, and are simply put up here for two 
weeks or so with privilege of visiting the bar 
and paying bills, until we return to the original 
clubhouse to be permanently assigned to the 
roof -garden or the grill-room. 

In New York there are little cliques of in- 
fantry in the Park — Perambulator Clubs; the 
boys of the slums have their gangs, with a club- 
house under a pier, or in a lumber pile; the 
schoolboys have their innumerable athletic 
societies, the college men their Greek letter 
fraternities, the college women their sororities. 
Both sexes graduate to their alumnar clubs, 



220 



Zhc IReal IRcw |)orh 




A NEW YORKER 



affiliate with political clubs and are buried by 
benefit clubs. 

There is a club for everything and everything 
in its club — age, color, sex, oc- 
cupation, previous condition of 
servitude, which may be a bar 
to one clan, is a credential to 
another. New York City is 
hardly more than a federated 
clubhouse. 

It is easy to join any of the 
New York clubs — if you have 
the influence and the money, and 
patience enough to linger at the 
end of a waiting list till there is 
gray in the gold and all the men 
you wanted to know are dead. It is easy for the 
stranger in town to get himself put up at any of 
the clubs — if he happens to know some in- 
fluential member. 

If you have a free evening and would care to 
see what millionaires do when they do nothing, 
all you have to do is to drop a line to "Dear J. 
Pierpont," and, if not previously engaged, he will 
gladly take you to the white Walhalla of the 
Metropolitan Club. You really ought not to 
leave town without visiting the remarkably 
original home of the New York Yacht Club; 
any of your friends who have defended the 
America s Cup will gladly put you up there — 
Mr. Iselin, for instance. The Lambs' gambols 



Clublan& 221 

are a distinct event in New York gaiety; address 
"Nat" Goodwin, or John Drew, or any of the 
prominent stars whom you may have put under 
social obHgations. 

The okl treaty of back-scratching reciprocity 
is now re- worded to, ''You club me and I'll club 
you. 

The stranger in town ought to find some bunk 
besides a hotel. If you happen to be a China- 
man, try the Reform Club in Doyers Street. If 
you come from Nippon, the Hinade or Rising 
Sun Club, founded in 1896, will welcome you, 
especially if you subscribe to the little magazine 
it publishes; and at Columbia University there 
IS a Japanese students' club. If you are a 
Syrian, Hungarian, Bohemian — anything — just 
wander around the East Side in your native 
costume. If you are a Hindu, try a theosophical 
meeting-room. If you are a Democrat, ask a 
policeman. If you are an anarchist, don't. 

There are political clubs of all persuasions. 
The far-famed Tammany Hall in East Four- 
teenth Street is only a club of ambitious nature, 
organized after the manner of Indian tribes with 
sachems and sich. The Democrats have two 
other clubs, thanks to a split in the ranks. The 
Manhattan Club, formerly in A. T. Stewart's 
old mansion, has now gone to Twenty-sixth 
Street, where, in the summer, one may sit on 
the balcony and mingle his black coffee and 
brown cigar, the aromatic foliage of Madi- 



222 ^be IRcal mew l^orft 

son Square and his Jeffersonian principles in 
one peaceful reverie. The other club, the Demo- 
cratic, at Fiftieth Street and Fifth Avenue, was 
founded by the ex-proprietor of New York, Mr. 
Croker. It is the home of the Tammany wing 
of the party. Brooklyn has also a finely housed 
Jefferson Club. Besides, every election district 
has its political clubs, named after district lead- 
ers, who pay for the compliment with an occa- 
sional chowder party on an excursion boat. 

The Republicans have a Union League Club 
in Brooklyn, and one better known in New York, 
The latter was founded in 1863 to aid the Union 
at a time when New York sentiment was not 
unanimous for the continuation of the war. Two 
years before Mayor Fernando Wood had threat- 
ened to secede from the Union, if necessary, all 
by himself. They are independents, these New 
Yorkers, and ar^ constantly talking of forming 
a State of their 8wn as a release from the truly 
rural rule of Albany. "Secede from Hayseed" 
would doubtless be the war cry. But, for the 
present, Father Knickerbocker must be content 
with J'y suis, fy reste. 

In 1863, however, the better thousands of New 
York manhood were at the front fighting for the 
Union. The men at home were largely those 
who were afraid to go or were unconvinced of 
the cause. Then came another demand for 
troops, to be enforced by draft. The malcon- 
tents now took courage; under the spur of 



Clublanb 



223 



anarchistic yellow jounuilisin they proposed to 
resist. They overpowered the police by num- 
bers, set buildings on fire, robbed, paraded, 
threatened, terrorized the whole city. The ne- 
groes were their special aversion, 
and eleven were killed; the mob 
even attacked a colored orphan 
asylum, which they burned 
down, the pickaninnies barely 
escaping. The New York Tri- 
bune was to be the next 
pillage, and Horace 
Greeley was to decorate 
a sour apple tree; but 
his men rigged up a long trough 
to roll bombshells out into the 
mob, and the pack kept its dis- 
tance. The police gradually re- 
gained control, but the anarcl^ 
had raged four days, eighteen 
men had been killed by the mob, including 
three policemen, fifty buildings had been 
burned and two or three million dollars of prop- 
erty destroyed. Of the rioters over twelve hun- 
dred were killed. It was to prevent the recur- 
rence of such dastardy that the Union League 
was organized. 

The Union League knows only peace nowa- 
days, but the comfort of its basking windows 
encourages and fills a clubhouse costing $400,- 
000. It includes an art gallery, and its loan 




224 zhc IRcal mew l^orft 

exhibitions are events. There is another Re- 
publican Club, on West Fortieth Street, of large 
membership. The Reform Club, at No. 233 
Fifth Avenue, is devoted to amelioration in gen- 
eral and the City Club to the never-ending need 
of municipal antiseptics. 

The creeds as well as the factions have their 
clubs, most prominent being the sumptuous 
Catholic Club facing Central Park on Fifty- 
ninth Street, the Church Club of Episcopalian 
persuasion at No. 578 Fifth Avenue, the Hebrew 
Associations, the Harmonic at No. 45 East 
Twenty-third Street, the Progress at Sixty-third 
Street and the Freundschaft in Seventy-second 
Street. But, pious as are these monasteries, it 
takes something more than faith to get into them. 
Faith without works is like a watch in the same 
condition. 

Among the colleges, the finest clubhouses are 
those of Old Eli and Fair Harvard. Harvard's 
is the elder, and it is a charming example of 
Colonial grace and dignity and comfort, though 
it has recently suffered considerable enlarge- 
ment. Yale faces Harvard defiantly across 
Forty-fourth Street, as on many a gridiron. 
The Yale house is of the modern school, soaring 
to eleven stories ; but its grill-room is quaint and 
old-fashioned, with a big fireplace and all the 
comforts of an old tavern. Columbia Univer- 
sity has a house in Madison Square. Princeton 
flies her orange and black flag in Thirty-fourth 




THE NIGHT HAWK 



(tlublant) 225 

Street, Cornell is in Forty-fifth Street, and 
Pennsylvania in Forty-fourth Street. 

At these clubs newly graduated men, still liv- 
ing on their fathers, are admitted at a very low 
rate. As they get older and incur families the 
dues increase with their other troubles. Chief 
of all college clubs is the super-palatial Univer- 
sity, which requires of its candidates that they 
should have at least rubbed up against the walls 
of one of the more important colleges. 

There is a club of college women also, as well 
as numberless other combinations of Zenobias 
and Jezebels, conspiring to substitute equality 
for their old superiority, to chain the masculine 
foot to the cradle and deprive man of the ancient 
and honorable monopoly of latchkey and nico- 
tine. The greatest of these is Sorosis, which has 
introduced the novel element of intellectuality 
into club life. A project is on foot to build a 
large Amazonian palace of athletics, gossip and 
exclusiveness, with billiard tables, French comic 
papers, a pipe-room and all the other joys of 
men's clubs. 

The Greek letter fraternities which furnish 
college life with even profounder mysteries than 
those in the books have, many of them, abiding- 
places for visitors in town. Show your pin to 
the doorman and give him the grip or the port- 
cullis falls. There are at least a dozen of these 
*'frat houses," and they serve a useful purpose 
in that they compel the graduate to remember 



226 Zbc IReal IHew l^orfe 

at least three Greek letters as relics of the days 
when he was a freshman and knew something. 

Then there are the trades and crafts. The 
labor union locals are in reality clubs, and the 
employers have been forced to club together to 
defend the downtrodden capitalist from their 
zeal. 

The Hardware Club, the Merchants', the 
Lawyers', the Downtown Association and the 
Aldine (formerly composed of Barabbas pub- 
lishers, now of business men) are mainly 
luncheon resorts where one can combine the 
midday meal with business conference and in- 
digestion. 

The Bar Association and the Academy of 
Medicine, however, are most palatially housed, 
and the Engineers of various sorts have homes 
where one gossips daily of horse-powers, watts, 
ohms and tangential stress. The men whose 
trade is war on land or sea have their Army and 
Navy Club. The Authors' Club occupies rooms 
donated by Andrew Carnegie, who has recently 
offered to build a lairdly asylum for all the other 
mechanicians. 

Of athletic clubs, the principal are the Cres- 
cent, of Brooklyn, with its boathouse on the 
Bay, and the New York Athletic, chief of 
American athletic clubs. Its annual Ladies' 
Day receptions are thronged, the women guests 
being entertained not only by stunts in the gym- 
nasium, but by aquatic contests and water polo 



Cluinan& 



227 



in the swimming pool. The club also owns 
Travers Island, with a clubliouse and grounds 
where outdoor games are held. Other athletic 
associations are the Fencers', the Riders', a 
Coaching Club, a Japanese jiu-jitsu club and 
numerous German Turnvereinen. 

There are two professional clubs 
conducted on the lucus a non lucendo 
principle — the Press Club, to which 
almost no press man belongs, and 
Club, of which one of 
its literary lights ob- 
served, ''The good 
thing about the Play- 
ers' Club is that you 
never meet any of 

those 

actors 

there." While 
this is hyper- 
bole, the club 
is largely re- 
cruited from authors and artists, though it was 
founded and endowed by Edwin Booth as a home 
for his fellows of the stage, and though it is 
a rule that no dramatic critic may break in and 
corrupt. The Players' has one of the most com- 
fortable residences in the city, and its atmosphere 
is full of a cheerful dignity. It is the lair of one 
of the town's pet wits. Beau Herford, whose epi- 
grams radiate thence throughout the avenues. 




THE LOTOS CLUB ENTERTAINER 



228 ^be IReal IRew l?orft 

Of much the same type as the Players', though 
a whit more formal and magnificent, is the Cen- 
tury, which was founded in 1847 and combines 
professional with social distinction. It enjoys 
one of the handsomest of the town's houses. 

Clubs which are more exclusively social and 
likely to be correspondingly more expensive are 
the venerable Union Club, founded in 1836, an 
ideal example of the English type; the Metro- 
politan (called the Millionaires' Club), the Knick- 
erbocker, the Strollers, the Calumet, the Rac- 
quet and the St. Nicholas (composed of descend- 
ants of men who dwelt in New York before 1785). 

The typical club is a co-operative effort to 
procure solitude. Isolation in the midst of a 
throng is the ideal, and, while conversation is 
permitted and reciprocity in drinks is encour- 
aged by the House Committee, both processes 
must be managed so discreetly as not to disturb 
those who are stealing a club nap. 

But there are a few clubs notable for their 
efforts to provide tonic instead of soothing syrup 
for their members. The chief of these are the 
Lambs, the Lotos, the Strollers, the Salmagundi, 
the Pleiades and the Twelfth Night. 

The Pleiades might be named the Oasis, for the 
refuge it gives from the desert of Sunday nights. 
The Twelfth Night is largely composed of ac- 
tresses who never entertain more than one lone 
lorn man at a time, except on Twelfth Night, 
when the gatherings are brilliant. 



Clublanb 220 

The Salmagundi is composed of the most im- 
portant artists of the country; after the manner 
of their Parisian schooling, they amuse them- 
selves artistically and with elaborateness. They 
give costume dinners, Christmas parties and auc- 
tions where good fellowship is indulged in in 
decorative style. 

The Strollers had its origin in a Columbia 
College dramatic club; it has since broadened 
out into a group of young society men with a 
mixture of artists and illustrators. It occupies 
the house lately held by the New York Yacht 
Club. Here it has a small theatre, where " Rois- 
ters" or ''Strolls" are given frequently during 
the winter. It devotes also a week every year 
to the production of an operetta: original with 
the members and played by the members, save 
for an auxiliary of pretty girls. The list of pa- 
tronesses for these entertainments exhausts the 
Social Register. 

The Lotos Club is famous throughout the 
land for its distinguished guests and their treat- 
ment. An American or a foreign visitor cannot 
claim to have had the final accolade of fame 
till the Lotos has given him a banquet. But at 
this banquet he will be treated not with rever- 
ence, but as a shining mark for the target prac- 
tice of the best wits. The art exhibitions at the 
Lotos are also notable. 

The Lambs is composed almost altogether of 
the more successful actors and playwrights. 



230 Zhc 1Rcal mew I^orh 

Here the most formidable tragedians and the 
most despotic comedians lay off the motley and 
make-up and become "just lambs." The club 
metaphor is carried to the last degree; the chief 
officer is the "Collie," the entertainments are 
*' gambols," presided over by ''the Boy"; once 
a year the club has a water party, called '' the 
Washing." The unequaled spirit of comrade- 
ship and co-operation and the great prosperity 
of the club are stout contradictions of prevail- 
ing superstitions concerning actors. 

There are in town also numberless clubs of 
occasion, single-banquet clubs. Of these is the 
Thirteen Club, which for many years has met 
without casualty on April 13th, the birthday of 
the guiding spirit of the thirteen colonies, Thom- 
as Jefferson. Last year one hundred and sixty- 
nine guests sat at thirteen tables; incidentally 
they insult all the other superstitions at once. 
They enjoy excellent health in spite of their sac- 
rilege, but it is doubtful if their work does any 
good, for surely those who at this late day still 
believe that any number has dynamic mean- 
ing either cannot read — or do not. 

There has been a noteworthy tendency among 
the clubs to drift toward one magnetic centre. 
Forty-third and Forty -fourth Streets seem to be 
the hub of to-day. Forty-fourth Street, indeed, 
has become a remarkable little bazaar for the 
display of original and contrasting chefs d'oeuvrc 
of architecture. 



Chapter XIII 

THE MANY PEOPLES OF NEW YORK NEW YORK'S COSMO- 
POLITANISM ITS POPULATION AND ENVIRONS RAPID 

GROWTH TRANSIENT POPULATION FOREIGN CITIES 

INSIDE NEW YORK FOREIGN LANGUAGES, CHURCHES, 

PAPERS, THEATRES, FESTIVALS THE VARIOUS COLO- 
NIES A FINNISH BATH A RUSSIAN EASTER BRAVERY 

OF THE IRISH Vv^HAT NEW YORK OFFERS THE INVADER 

BUT I say, you know, you Americans 
are so beastly provincial," growled 
Calverly. "You ah; you know you ah!" 

" Provincial !" gasped De Peyster. " Why, the 
word cosmopolitan was invented for us. Rome 
in her palmiest days never knew what wide- 
worldliness was compared with New York. 
Rome, in fact, never approached the size of New 
York. The numbers of native Italians and their 
children now in New York make a total nearly 
equal to Rome's present population. New York 
is growing at a fiendish rate. 

"The population of London was 4,500,000 in 
1901. New York's, in 1900, was 3,500,000; in 
1903 it was nearly 3,750,000, though, by rights, 
the Jersey suburbs are as much a part of New 
York as Harlem or Brooklyn; and they include 
Jersey City with 206,000, Newark with 246,000, 
Hoboken with 82,000, and places like Bayonne, 



232 Zhc IRcal mew ^ovW 

Englewood, Hackensack and West Hoboken and 
the other places, with a total of 600,000. These 
were their figures for 1900, and they have in- 
creased materially in the last three years, for 
New York itself has increased by 280,000 in 
that time. Add 600,000 Jerseyites to our pres- 
ent 3,716,139 inhabitants and you have 4,316,- 
139, which is pressing London hard. We shall 
pass London in a few years at a canter." 

"Well, of all the confounded impudence! 
You Yankees beat the world at that, at least," 
said Calverly. "As you say, I guess I'll go and 
smoke a pipe." 

"No, you don't," said De Peyster. "You'll 
sit and listen to my pipe," and he began to deluge 
him with statistics, of which the follow^ing is a 
digest, with some garnishments: 

The increase in New York and its Jersey sub- 
urbs in three years is more than the whole pres- 
ent population of Buffalo, the eighth city of the 
Union. There are more people in this city than 
in any American State except six. In New York 
there are more Germans and Irish born abroad, 
or of the first generation, than the whole popu- 
lation of any other American city except Chi- 
cago. There are more Hebrews here than the 
whole population of any other city except Chi- 
cago and Philadelphia. There are only six 
other cities that have more men and women 
and children of all races than New York has 
of Italians alone. 



Zbc flDan^ peoples of IRew ll)orU 233 



Then our floatint]^ population ought to be con- 
sidered. Our tlieatres and nearby resorts de- 
pend hirgely on a constant transient element, 
which, like the big wave in the 
Niagara whirlpool, is always the 
same, though at no two moments 
has it the same constituents. 

Fifty thousand retail merchants 
come to the town every year 
from every State in the Union; 
they spend half a billion dollars 
every autumn, five millions of it 
for hotels and theatres and per- 
sonal expenses. A tenth of the 
buyers are women. There are 
certain wholesale stores where 
congresses of the States could be 
held, where individual salesmen sell three or four 
million dollars' worth of goods — and spend many 
hundreds of dollars at the company's expense 
showing the rural merchant what a wicked town 
this is. 

Even statistics grow picturesque in New York. 
Of native Englishmen and Scotchmen there are 
87,000 residents; of English and Scotch parent- 
age 204,000 more; the total is a British city 
bigger than Nottingham or than Plymouth and 
Southampton put together. Of Frenchmen and 
their children we have only 43,000 — that is to 
say, we could build about two Dieppes here. 
We have a few Danes and a few Persians, 




A NEW 

YORKER 



234 Zbc IReal 1Rcw l!)orh 

Armenians and Turks, and a number of Hindu 
Swamis teaching their occult cults. We have 
2,000 native Dutch, 1,000 Japanese, 8,000 natives 
of China, 8,000 citizens born in Switzerland, 
1,000 in Wales, 11,000 in Norway, 15,000 Fin- 
nish refugees, 28,000 born in Sweden and 
44,000 born here of Swedish parents. Of Aus- 
trians we have 71,000 foreign born and 113,000 
born here. Of Poles we had, in 1900, 30,000 
born abroad and 53,000 born here; altogether 
nearly as many as in Posen. Of Hungarians we 
had 31,000 natives, and 52,000 of first genera- 
tion. Of Roumanians there are 35,000 natives. 

In 1903 the total Italian population, includ- 
ing the first generation, was 382,775 — that is to 
say. New York is the fourth greatest Italian city 
in the world, and contains more Italians than 
Florence and Venice put together. At the pres- 
ent rate of immigration New York will, in a few 
years, be the largest of all Italian cities. Of 
Russians, mainly Jews, there are 155,000 foreign 
born with 245,000 children— a total of 400,000, 
more than the entire population of Kiev and 
Kishinev put together. The Irish immigrants 
numbered 275,000 in 1900, with 725,000 of the 
first generation; just a round million sons of 
Erin. 

Thus New York is so distinctly the largest 
Irish city in the world that its Irish population 
is nearly three times as large as that of either 
Dublin or Belfast. Of native Germans, in 1900, 



Zbc flDan? peoples of H^ew ^ov\\ 235 

we had 322,000, and 786,000 cliildren^l, 108,000 
— nearly two-thirds the popuhition of Berlin, 
and nearly as much as Hamburg and Munich 
put together. 

New York is a microcosm — almost a macro- 
cosm — in itself. Of course, London is at pres- 
ent larger in numbers, though New York has 
wrested its financial supremacy from it. Lon- 
don is the capital of the great British Empire, 
and in its narrow streets with their low buildings 
one sees many a barbarian and occasional speci- 
mens from all her colonies; but for actual cos- 
mopolitance of population Paris is perhaps 
more noteworthy than London. And New 
York outruns either. 

There are whole districts of New York where 
hardly a sign is in English; the legends are in 
Italian, Hebrew, German, Russian or French. 
To ride up Broadway and read the names of the 
merchants on a single building is a startling 
revelation of what a multiplex civilization is ours. 

In London and Paris, while there are foreign 
bits, the general impression is of uniformity. 
The names on the signs have a national unity, 
with rare exceptions. In New York irregular- 
ity alone is regular. 

Though the foreigners make haste to learn 
English, they cannot acquire it immediately, 
and the New York ear listens perforce to a 
polyglot symphony. Walk through Central 
Park and almost all the nursemaids and their 



236 Zhc IRcal IRcw IPork 

charges seem to be speaking French — often the 
Canadian patois; else it is a pleasant accent 
from Athlone exchanged with a policeman's pure 
Dublin. Take a ferry and you hear two swart 
Italian bootblacks tossing to one another their 
Neapolitan estimates of the feet in front of them 
and the humanity attached — ex pede Herculem. 
On almost any street car platform you will hear 
two Germans talking a curious corruption of 
broken English and Anglicized German; they 
come to speak their German words like Ameri- 
cans and their American words like Germans. 
On the Elevated road long-sleeved Chinese 
laundrymen vocalize, or long-bearded Polish 
Jews gesticulate Yiddish; it is generally believed 
that if a street car should cut off their hands they 
would be speechless. 

The news of the day is cosmopolitan. The 
Belasco medal for dramatic ability was awarded 
last to an Armenian, Hovsep Hovsepian. About 
the same time the Swedes gave their third fair 
for gathering funds to build themselves a hos- 
pital — what a massage-paradise it will be! The 
Swiss already have a home. The night the Ger- 
mans were giving their Arion Ball the Bohemian 
Gymnastic Association gave another at the 
Grand Central Palace. And a week later the 
Irish Athletic Club had a festival at the Madison 
Square Garden. At the same time the "Clubul 
Nacional Roman," i. e., the National Rouman- 
ian Club, gave a dance in national costume and 



Zhc flDan^ pcoplce of H^cvv ll?ork 237 



invited five other Roumanian societies to join 
them in treading the stately hora and whirling 
in the kindia. At the new Cathedral on Morning- 
there are to be 
where services 
seven tongues 



side Heights 
seven chapels 
w ill be held in 
every Sunday, 
recently taken 
tary pub- 
school in 



T w e n- '^ 

Street shows men 
nine national- 
The cosmopol- 
population is re- 
papers. While 
Fliegende Blatter 
humor, Life , 




photograph 
an elemen- 
lic night 
East 
t i e t h 
twenty- 



ities. 
it an fabric of 



A NEW 
YORKER 



our 
^ fleeted in our comic 
Punch, Le Rire and 
are full of native 
Puck and Judge are 
filled with foreign types. Our plays run the same 
way, and in the same cast of characters all dia- 
lects may meet. The American actor must im- 
personate German, French, Cockney, Italian, 
Swedish, Spanish, Russian — all humanity. 

Furthermore, our foreign-born citizens have 
their own papers and their own theatres. At 
least three New York daily newspapers are pub- 
lished in German, two in Italian, one in French 
and several in Hebrew. Periodicals of less fre- 
quent appearance are in Spanish, Chinese, Jap- 
anese, Turkish, Finnish, Russian, Roumanian — 
what not ? If you are familiar w ith Spanish or 



238 ziK IRcal mew l?orft 

Italian you can understand the weekly Ecoul 
Americei, for Roumanian is a descendant of 
Latin. 

There are six periodicals published in the 
Syrian colony, their language being Arabic. 
Their quarter is Washington Street, and a great 
sensation was recently caused by an allegory, 
published by a poet, Ameen Rihani, rebuking old 
Syrian ideas in combat with Americanism. He 
was warned that his life was in danger, but de- 
termined none the less to spend his summer 
under the cedars of Lebanon. 

Of foreign theatres there are many play- 
ing the entire season. The French, curiously 
enough, have not been able to support a theatre, 
and even the opera companies that prosper in 
New Orleans usually strand in New York; 
but the chief French stars visit this country, and 
the same is true of the Italians, who have been 
able to support nothing more than a quaint 
marionette show. A series of Russian orchestral 
concerts by Russian performers was given this 
last winter. A vast majority of our orchestra 
performers are German. The Germans main- 
tain a first-class stock company at the Irving 
Place Theatre, and the most famous German 
tragedians and comedians play here as "guests." 
There was for many years, in the Germania 
Theatre, a company that played hilarious local 
farces based on German experiences in New 
York. 



Z\K flDan^ peoples of mew ll)orU ^^^ 

The enormous Jewish immigration, especially 
from Russia and Poland, has gathered a popu- 
lation which will soon reach a million, and has 
earned for New York the occasional nickname 
of the '*New Jerusalem." There are several 
theatres supported by these people. Two of 
them, the Thalia and the Windsor (once the 
fashionable opera house of the city), are on the 
Bowery. An ornate new one is in Grand Street, 
where Rubinstein's opera, "The Demon," was 
given last March for the first time in this coun- 
try by Russian amateurs. Jacob Adler is a 
famous tragedian, a noteworthy Shylock and 
the lessee of the theatre. If he is the ''Yiddish 
Salvini" Jacob Gordin is the "Yiddish Shake- 
speare." He has written seventy plays in his 
twelve years here, and twenty-five of them have 
been successes. They are written in that jargon 
called "Judisch" (i. e., Jewish) or Yiddish. 
At these theatres one may also see occasional 
adaptations from the reigning successes. Sar- 
dou's " Gismonda," for instance, was twisted 
into a moral lesson and ended w ith a marriage 
and a duel in a synagogue. There is a union of 
Hebrew actors and one of Hebrew vaudeville 
actors. At these theatres and at the variety 
halls the signs and programmes are altogether 
in Hebrew characters. 

The foreign races, as a rule, gather in clusters, 
and make certain districts their own; some of 
them occupy more than one colony. Thus, the 



240 



^be IRcal mew l?ork 



great Jewish district, "the Ghetto," is around 
Hester, Division and Grand Streets. It is said 
to contain three times as many Hebrews as the 
"Ghetto" of London, five times as many as that 
of Paris, and six times that of 
Berlin. In the section south of 
Houston Street and east of the 
Bowery a recent canvass showed 
some 400,000 people, of whom 
eighty per cent, are Jews, half of 
them Russians and a seventh 
Roumanians. But the open- 
ing of the Williamsburg 
Bridge has seen a second 
exodus. Brownsville, on 
the outskirts of Brooklyn, 
is the new Canaan, and it 
has grown like a Western 
boom-town, though the 
same unsightliness, the same 
uncleanliness, sordid n ess 
and sweat-shop perfume 
distinguish the new as well 
as the old Ghetto. People prefer their own 
national odors, and the Ghettites are noted for 
their common scents. Contrary to a general 
opinion, they have no objection to the bathtub; 
they have found that it makes an excellent 
coalbin. 

The Italians also have migrated. Mulberry 
Bend was their original centre, and still thrives, 




IN FRONT OF A YIDDISH 
THEATRE 




THE GHETTO 



ZiK flDanv^ pcoplce of Mew ^ov\\ 241 

but "Little Italy" proper is now on the upper 
West Side around One Hundred and Tenth 
Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where variolas 
drinking-gardens, merry-go-rounds and cheap 
shows have also earned the region the name of 
"Little Coney Island." 

The Spanish business houses are in Cedar 
Street and Maiden Lane; they have no special 
home centre. 

The English are pretty well lost in the native 
American population, but there is a colony about 
Gansevoort where, as we are told, roast beef is cut 
the w^rong w^ay of the grain and where dropped 
"h's" do not attract attention like spilled tor- 
pedoes. The royal birthdays are usually cele- 
brated by a banquet of the faithful and a cable- 
gram of loyalty is sent regardless of cable tolls, 
for the English are slow to give up that old creed 
which brought on the War of 1812, "Once Brit- 
ish always British." 

The French centre has been shifting, and it 
is a curious fact that the poor French usually 
move into districts from which the negroes are 
just moving out. The negroes have usually 
frozen out the Irish — though there are now no 
exclusively Irish districts in town. The Jews, 
as a rule, follow the French or the Italians, and 
anti-Semitic prejudices give them an undisputed 
possession. 

The French still linger in some numbers on 

South Fifth iVvenue, for Fifth Avenue is aristo- 
16 



242 Z]K IRcal mew ^ovW 

cratic only along its middle distance, as North 
Fifth Avenue is very largely populated by Ger- 
man Jews. The main body of the French are 
flocking to the West Twenties now, and num- 
berless table d'hote cafes are found in this re- 
gion, where the signs, the supplies and the guests 
are wholly French. The better class of the 
French live in the West Nineties. 

The Austrians gather on lower Second Ave- 
nue, in a district wdiich they fondly call Little 
Vienna, or ** Klein Wien." The East Houston 
Street district is known as "Little Hungary," 
and the street itself is often called ''Goulash 
Row." The Gentile Poles are also here. The 
Bohemians cluster in First and Second Avenues, 
between Seventieth and Eightieth Streets. 

The refugees of Finland mainly pass through 
New York to the West. In the last five years 
their numbers in this country have increased 
from 3,000 to over 200,000. That is to say, one- 
tenth of all Finland has come to this country 
since the Tsar's decree depriving the nation of 
its constitutional liberties. Many of them linger 
in New York, and they have in the Battery Park 
Building a clubroom where one hears the fa- 
miliar greeting of " Good day" answered by the 
national "God grant it." At this "Finnish Ex- 
iles' Club" the gratitude for their American ref- 
uge finds vent in cries of "America E lakoon!'" 
(America be blessed!). Unlike our immigrants 
from many other nations, our Finnish acquisi- 



Zbc flDanv^ Ipcoplco of IHcw li)oik '-'^^ 

tions are frequently of the highest soeial posi- 
tions; but the poor eome also, and there was 
great excitement caused by the recent publica- 
tion of the fact that in Blythedale, a region around 
Sixtieth Street in South Brooklyn, commonly 
known as ''Finland," one can now obtain a 
genuine Finnish bath. This luxury resembles 
the Russian and Japanese institutions in that it 
is conducted by women. The hot steam which 
is raised from throwing water on boulders is not 
the only shock the American gets, for the bather 
— or bathee — is invited to appear clothed only 
in his right mind, if he can retain even this 
diaphanous garment. He is then soaped and 
beaten to a fever heat with leafy branches. 

The Greek population is not large, yet the 
"Ajax" of Sophokles was recently given in the 
original Greek at Clinton Hall in Clinton Street. 
It was claimed that this was the first perform- 
ance of the text for twenty-three centuries. The 
Greeks incline to the trade of florist in New 
York. 

The Russians in New York are mainly Jews, 
who feel no friendship for the country which 
has treated them almost as badly as we have 
treated the negroes. At the outbreak of the 
Russian war with Japan this feeling of hostility 
•for the country whose tyrannies had driven them 
across the ocean found expression in the move- 
ment to subscribe for a battleship, name it The 
Kishinev and present it to the Japanese navy. 



244 ^be IRcal mew lJ?orh 

This very undiplomatic idea was fortunately not 
carried out, but it led David Warfield, that vivid 
impersonator of the downtrodden Jew, to sug- 
gest that a good battle motto would be, ** Re- 
member the Kishinev." 

There are enough Christian Russians, how- 
ever, in New York to support the beautiful 
Church of St. Nicholas in East Ninety-second 
Street. There are about three thousand ortho- 
dox Russians in New York, their centre being 
Avenue A between Seventy-second and Seventy- 
sixth Streets. For them four newspapers are 
printed in the Russian language under subsidy 
from their Government. One of these is pub- 
lished at the church and is called The Russian 
Orthodox, its editor being the pastor, Father 
Hotovitsky. There is a '' Greek Orthodox Mu- 
tual Benefit Society," which holds its conven- 
tions at the church and participates in a religious 
service lasting a week. 

The Easter of the Greek calendar is elaborately 
observed at the Russian church. The ceremony 
begins at midnight and lasts three hours. The 
worshipers stand ready with unlighted can- 
dles. The ritual includes a picturesque search 
for the body of Christ, which had been sym- 
bolically laid there on Good Friday but is 
now not to be found, since the Christ has risen. 
The procession of priests and deacons passes out 
of the church and the chant dies away, only to 
increase again as the pageant reappears exactly 



^be nDanv> peoples of IWcw IPorU 245 

at midnight. Then the great crystal cliandelier 
bursts into flame, and, as the priests witli lighted 
candles pass through the crowd, the nearest wor- 
shipers light their own tapers and pass the light 
along, greeting each other with a smile as they 
cross themselves. The Bishop then takes his 
post at the royal gate and calls aloud, "Christ 
is risen!" 

"He is risen indeed," the people respond. 

The Bishop then gives the three kisses of 
peace to each of the dignitaries, and through- 
out the church the worshipers also exchange 
kisses and the greeting, "Christ is risen. He 
is risen indeed." 

Communion is administered and dyed eggs 
are blessed and distributed among the worship- 
ers, who kiss the gold crucifix. There follows 
a feast of Easter dishes, including "kalitch," 
which is of cake, and "paschal," which is of 
cheese. Now the Tsar's health is drunk by the 
congregation, for the Tsar is the Russian Pope 
as well as Emperor. The service ends with the 
•national hymn, which is sung with deep fervor 
in these war times. 

The Germans of New York are so numerous, 
and they so quickly Americanize themselves, that 
it is difficult to limit them. They are remark- 
able for their club life, their athletics and their 
musical interests. Among the many Turn-Ver- 
einen is the Central in East Eighty-second Street, 
which occupies a six-story building that cost 



246 Zbc IRcal IHcw IPorh 

$700,000, and the New York, which has a large 
clubhouse in Eighty-fifth Street. Of clubs the 
principal are the Arion, the Liederkranz, the 
Aschenbroedel and several Mannerchor, all of 
large membership and occupying handsome 
buildings where choral and instrumental per- 
formances are constantly given. Their most 
exclusive social club is the German Verein, on 
Fifty- ninth Street facing the Park. The most 
picturesque is the local chapter of the " Schlar- 
affia," in which the ritual of knights and squires 
is carried out and fierce beer duels are fought 
with amusing ceremonies. 

The negroes can hardly be called foreigners 
except by a long backward look. The North- 
ern negro is as distinct from the Southern as the 
progressive Japanese from the old school. The 
negroes in New York suffer, of course, from 
the national race prejudice, which is in some 
ways more severe up here than in the South. 
Their true paradise is in European capitals such 
as London and Paris, where they suft'er little or 
no ostracism from white society. But they are 
numerous enough in New York City to make 
a world of their own, and some of them attain 
a high degree of prosperity and political impor- 
tance. They have their clubs, their churches 
and their castes, and perhaps there are no more 
elaborately dressed men in New York than the 
aristocratic negroes. In fact, by their willingness 
to indulge in the more brilliant colors and the 



Zbc n!>an\) peoples of IRcw ^ov\\ 2^ 



more extreme styles, and by their frequent good 
taste in the combination of other tints with their 
native bronze tliey sometimes outshine tlie pale- 
face Beau Brummells. 

They have also their vicious strata, and there 
are districts where the proverbial razor is a 
weapon to which frequent reference is made. 

Their principal districts are 
West Third Street, AYest 
Twenty-eighth Street and West 
Fifty-third Street. Sixth 
Avenue from Tw^enty-sixth to 
Thirty-second Streets, is often 
called the "Darkey Fifth 
Avenue." The vicious negroes 




ON DARKEY FIFl^H AVENUE 



248 



Zbc IRcal IHcw ^ovh 



haunt numerous low dives, and there have been 
occasional outbursts of race war along Seventh 
and Eighth Avenues, between the rough ele- 
ments, Caucasian and Ethio- 
pian. The dances given by the 
colored aristocrats often attract 
white audiences, who find great 
amusement in the profound 
dignity of the couples. They 
can be graceful as well, when 
they forget their dignity, and 
the Cakewalk is amoup: the 
most graceful of national 
K" dances. Small wonder that 
it has invaded Europe and 
set the courtiers to studying 




A NEW YORK 
ALDERMAN 



ragtime. 



It is a common joke that the Irish own New 
York, and run it to suit themselves. With a 
million of them here, all of them ambitious, their 
prominence in politics is as legitimate as it is unde- 
niable. It is their native element. In London 
also they play a prominent part in the military 
as well as literary life, and it is astounding how 
often one finds that a prominent Englishman 
is really an Irishman. The Police and the Fire 
Departments of New York are very largely 
Hibernian, and the heroism of both is of the 
highest quality. At the latest award of three 
medals for acts of particularly brilliant heroism 
all three were earned by Irishmen. 



Zbc fIDanv) pcoplcci of 1Hc\v \)ov\\ 240 

On St. Patrick's Day enormous })rocessions 
march both in New York and Brooklyn (hiring 
the day, and banquets and athletic sports fill 
the afternoon and evening. On this occasion 
the old Irish game of football can be seen. On 
last St. Patrick's Day 10,000 Irishmen marched 
in Brooklyn, and in New York 30,000 paraded 
Fifth x\venue for five miles. This j)rocession 
included over fifty Irish societies, the most 
prominent being the Irish Volunteers and the 
Ancient Order of Hibernians. The comic papers 
for so many years had so much sport with the 
antediluvian high hats that used to mark this 
occasion that they were discarded for a more 
businesslike felt. The emerald sashes, however, 
are still worn, for '* the wearing of the green " is a 
memory that is held sacred by the victims of 
centuries of oppression. The English deter- 
mination to destroy the Irish language had 
almost succeeded, but the Gaelic revival has 
done so much for the resurrection of the national 
life and literature and music that its reflex is 
found in this country. Meetings are frequently 
held where nothing but Gaelic is spoken or sung, 
and a Gaelic drama was recently presented. 

A prominent place in all Irish gatherings is 
taken by the Sixty-ninth Regiment, the onl}^ 
regiment in the American National Guard which 
has a distinct nationality. Made uj), as it is, 
of Irishmen and their descendants, it and its 
offspring, the Irish Brigade, took so prominent 



250 ^bc 1Rcal mew ^ovh 

a part in the Civil War and were so alert in the 
Spanish War that it has been commonly said 
that the Sixty-ninth is the best known regiment 
in the world. As a token of the city's trust in 
Irish fidelity to their foster-fatherland, the New 
York municipality has recently presented the 
regiment with a $600,000 home, which will be in 
many respects the finest armory in the United 
States. 

It would be hard to find an important race 
that has no representation in New York. The 
city has become a congress of nations, in per- 
manent session. The Persian rug makers, the 
cigarette-rolling maidens and men from Egypt 
and Turkey add their exotic notes to complete 
the infinite variety. 

Other capitals are Meccas of interest to 
tourists, but foreigners who come to New York 
come here to live. They may have cherished 
false hopes of the extent of personal liberty, 
and of the ease with which money is to be 
acquired, but at least they find opportunity un- 
limited and they are humiliated by no hereditary 
nobility — save for the paupers of foreign peer- 
ages who visit us in flocks. But they, too, come 
here on business, and the number of American 
women who have bought foreign titles with 
human attachments is legion. It has become 
an international industry for which a clearing- 
house is needed. 



Chapter XIV 

WHERE TO EAT — THE COOKERY PROBLEM IN NEW YORK — 

THE RESTAURANT SYSTEM THE COSMOPOLITAN MENUS 

CHEAP LUNCHES THE STREET STANDS AND THE 

BUFFET LUNCHEON CHOP HOUSES THE AMERICAN 

OYSTER AND CLAM CULINARY ARISTOCRACY OLD- 
TIME RESTAURANTS SOME LARGE ESTABLISHMENTS 

THE KITCHEN AT THE WALDORF THE LUNCH CLUBS 

THE NEW YORK TABLE d'hOTE ROOF - GARDENS 

THE PARK. RESTAURANTS — THE SPORTY PLACES 

AMERICAN MENUS THE CHINESE RESTAURANTS THE 

FRENCH, GERMAN AND OTHER NATIONAL RESORTS 

WHERE to eat, and what?— that is the 
question. Whether 'tis nobler in the 
stomach to suffer the slings and arrows of out- 
rageous kitchens, or to take up arms against a 
cuisine of troubles, and by going out to a restau- 
rant increase them ? 

New York life is distinctly a homeless, apart- 
ment existence, and the domestic problem has 
ceased to be anything so rosy as the struggle to 
keep a good cook and has become the forlorn 
hope of keeping any. The distraught house- 
keeper simply vibrates between the dining-room 
and the employment bureau, and watches sul- 
tana after sultana pass by. Erin gives place to 
Bingen, and Jap to Lap; Swede walks out as 
Finn walks in. The comic papers make a 



252 z\K IRcal 1Rcw l!)orh 

staple of it, but it is gruesome reality to the mis- 
tress who endures unheard of humiliations and 
serves her servants' whims. 

The Spanish Inquisition had a favorite in- 
strument of torture known as the chafing-dish. 
It has been revived for the New Yorker, along 
with the ''diminishing walls," now known as the 
seven-room flat. The average householder eats 
out, or goes without, unless his wife buys some 
ready-made food — "no work, no heat; just 
pray, then eat." Even the gastric juices have 
formed a union and the New Yorker must have 
his food masticated and digested for him in a 
factorv. He can do the rest — with liberal 
pepsin. 

The consequence is a shiftlessness that is 
appalling to the chance visitor, and the discon- 
tent is incredible. You will hear pale pluto- 
crats wailing that Delmonico's never has any- 
thing fit to eat, and that the guests at the Wal- 
dorf are starving to death. For we all come to 
realize that bills of fare, like truffles, have never 
been what they used to be. 

A further consequence is that there is an un- 
precedented rivalry in the efl'ort to tempt and 
tease the Manhattan alimentary canal to a little 
secretion. All the chefs of all the nations juggle 
all the cookbooks into one culinary anthology, 
until there is surely no city on earth where such 
elaborateness and variety distinguish the menus. 
Verily, we are in the period of the Restauration. 



Mbcrc to leat 



253 



We have everything tliat every otlier nation 
has, and all our own besides. Our curries 
might not satisfy the Maharajah of Bling, and 
our gulyas might not fascinate either Buda or 
Pesth. But it is not for lack of having Hindus 
and Hungarians here to prepare them, and at 
least we have a fair imitation, while in Singa- 
pore you cannot get even a bad roas'in'-ear of 
green corn, nor in Versailles a soggy pumpkin 
pie. 

As for elegance of appointment, 
we are Babylonian, Sardanapalian. 
Other cities have their splendid 
refectories, but the best of 
any of them is not equal 
to half a dozen of ours. 
The American becomes 
calloused by easy stages to 
the cab fares and the res- 
taurant prices, and if cost 
is a proof of anything ex- 
cept slavery our very tips 
are enough to wring a howl 
from foreign nobility. 

On the other hand, you need not prate of the 
cheapness of life abroad, and talk of your little 
cafes in the outskirts of Paris or of some 
sewage-perfumed wharf of Venice where Lu- 
cul feasts may be had for the Lazarine obol. 
For here, too. New York is not lacking. In un- 
counted nooks there lurk little restaurants where 




AT Dennett's 



254 c;hc 1Rcal mcw) IPorh 

some lowly genius takes more pride in his cook- 
ery than in the purity of his napery or the gleam 
of his front windows. And he who will lay aside 
the hypocrisy of the untidy will find that the 
town is fairly sprinkled with lunch-rooms where, 
at ridiculous prices of five and ten cents, one may 
eat the most delicious cereals, wheat cakes of 
Titian hue and truly contemporary eggs, while 
he sips surpassing coffee under high-tiled ceil- 
ings and in glistening walls that a Pompeian 
nobleman would have envied. The sanitary 
mind will forgive the clatter for the sake of the 
neatness. 

It was of our national delicacy, the buckwheat 
cake, that Matthew Arnold made an observa- 
tion of surprisingly poor acumen. He and his 
wife w^ere entertained at an American home. 
The breakfast ended in a glorious tower of 
buckwheat porous plasters. Mrs. Arnold de- 
clined them with suspicious timidity. St. Mat- 
thew was persuaded to nibble. Turning to his 
wife, he draw^led, '* Try them, my d'yah, they're 
not half so nahsty as they look." 

To have complained of them after they had 
lain on his ''little Mary" for some time might 
have been excusable, but a word against their 
auburn beauty was only a proof of an inartistic 
eye. The English never had a sense of color. 

De Peyster and Calverly were at it, as usual, 
over their respective cities. De Peyster broke 
out: 



Mbcic to Eat 255 

"You cannot get at any price at any London 
hotel a cuj) of coffee as good as you can get at 
any of two hundred and fifty places in New 
York for five cents. At the ABC restaurants 
alone in London can one be sure of good coffee, 
but they are all slovenly. The Duval places in 
Paris are clean but comparatively high-priced. 
The New York lunch-rooms are not only very 
cheap, but they show affidavits proving that they 
buy the most expensive coffees in the market; the 
proprietors keep their own dairies, cultivate their 
own maple syrup forests, preserve their own 
fruits and make their own breads and pastries. 
The Childs, the Hartford, the New Haven, the 
Charter Oak and other lunch-room systems are 
legion, but they are all clean. People laugh at 
the places bearing the name of Dennett, be- 
cause of their Biblical mottoes. One sign as- 
sures you that the Lord is your shepherd, but 
the next warns you to ' Keep your eye on your 
overcoat.' Still, if ever religion showed its 
fruits it is in this immaculate service and honest 
cookery. You are invited to visit the kitchen, 
and you are not expected to tip. 

"And they are open all night, while in Lon- 
don the belated must seek a filthy coffee stand 
or wait for his breakfast tea." 

The New Yorker takes his breakfast at home, 
as a rule, and, from the influence of Europe, it 
is likely to be limited to fruit, coffee and rolls, 
unless he still sticks to the national custom of 



256 trbc IRcal IRcw )J)orft 

eating an early morning dinner, or, as a result 
of the physical culture crusades, wisely skips 
breakfast altogether. 

Luncheon no New York man takes with his 
family. It is one of the evils of the shape of the 
city that everybody's home is too far north to 
reach and return from at the lunch hour. This 
has its effect on the domestic situation and the 
divorce courts. 

There are numberless places downtown which 
serve practically nothing but lunches, and their 
whole day's work is preparing for and recover- 
ing from a mad flood of humanity at the noon 
crevasse. These places range from the little can- 
opied stands where harrowing pies and lyddite 
doughnuts are gobbled by office boys to the 
downtown Delmonico's or Robbins's or the Sa- 
varin, where multi-millionaires try to force deli- 
cacies on their dyspepsias. At the St. Andrew 
coffee stands a huge cup of coffee or tea is given 
for one cent, and the tamale man, with his Mex- 
ican dish and his cry, ''All hot, all hot!" rivals the 
dealer in Vienna sausage. The luxurious can 
polish off* with a penny's worth of dubious ice 
cream served on a scrap of paper by an Italian 
whose hands are rich in local color. 

The buffet lunch is a curious scheme for sav- 
ing chair space and waiters' fees. You wander 
about and help yourself to various articles, all 
price-marked, eat them standing at round ped- 
estals, and, as you go out, declare your own 




THE HURDY GURDY DANCE 



Mbcre to lEat 257 

bill to the man at the wheel, who whirls you 
out a ticket, which you cash in at the door. 
Few people will cheat for the sake of a few pen- 
nies, and an eye is kept on the over-hearty. 

In the ''Automat" restaurant one drops coins 
into slots and receives a viand which he drops 
into another slot. There is also a company 
which delivers cold lunches in paper boxes at 
your office, just as there are companies that pro- 
vide clean towels and soap. 

. London has long had vegetarian restaurants. 
They are just coming in here, under bland and 
ladylike titles, such as "The White Rose" or 
"The Laurel." But even for those who do not 
believe in limiting themselves to a single mania 
it is worth while dropping in at these places on 
occasion to give the stomach a rest from the 
meat-chopping wear and tear. The prices at 
these restaurants are very low; hence they 
have not interested the general public, which 
likes to pay for novelties. The vegetarians get 
up various amusing fooleries in imitation of 
steaks, cutlets, filets and ducks; they call them 
"true meats" and get their black effects with 
nuttose and protose and other " oses." Even the 
coffee is made out of blistered peanuts— or at 
least so it tastes. But the vegetables are amaz- 
ingly well feooked, and have quite a new taste 
when there jare no meats to distract the palate. 
And they db wonderful things with fresh mush- 
rooms and nuts. Sometimes they serve a black 
17 



258 ^be IRcal IRcw IPorU 

cream of mushrooms that is worthy of a pluto- 
crat. 

The chop house is an adaptation of the Eng- 
lish grill-room, though few of them invite you 
to select your own chop and watch it brown on 
the hissing gridiron, as they so appetizingly man- 
age it in London. Still, we have "Old Tom's," 
in Thames Street, back of Trinity Church; Far- 
rish's, in John Street; Engel's and Brown's, which 
are much frequented of actors and singers and 
have fascinating collections of old prints and 
quaint photographs. 

But in compensation for our inferior chops 
we have what England lacks— a real oyster. He 
holds court in numberless oyster "bays," in rough- 
and-ready stands near Fulton Market, where a 
deft gentleman nicely splits the horny shell and 
proffers the delicacy on the pearly lower half ; or 
the more ornate places, like Dorlon's, O'Neill's, 
Shanley's, Jack's, Burns's, Kennerley's, Still's 
and the like. 

England has a pathetic little pickley affair, of 
which one can only say, " God made it, therefore 
let it pass for an oyster" ; but the Englishman 
himself is the first to pay homage to the Amer- 
ican bivalve, sweet, succulent and varying in 
area from the aristocratic Blue Point to the 
leviathan from Saddle Rock, concerning which 
Thackeray, when first he achieved one, ex- 
claimed, with cannibal glee: "I feel as if I had 
swallowed a baby!" 



Mbcrc to lEat 259 

And then there are chuns! Think of it! 
Europe has only metapliorical chims. No won- 
der Columbus discovered America. But what 
did those ante-1492-ers eat when there was no 
"r" in the month ? 

How long would King Saul have sulked had 
he only been able to go down to some near- 
New York beach and have a shore dinner on 
the sand ? It begins with clam broth, then fol- 
low clams on the half -moon, succeeded by a 
luxurious clam chowder, as a prelude to the 
stewed clams, whose empty shells, thrown over 
the shoulder as a libation to the gods, measure 
the honorable capacity of each guest by the 
height of the monument behind him. 

But this is getting far from town and the 
grinding lunch-hour. Wednesday De Peyster 
invited his sister and Calverly and Miss Collis — 
now "Myrtle," thanks to Calverly — to drift 
about downtown. and see the jewelry shops of 
Maiden Lane, the Stock Exchange and such 
like. For luncheon he invited them to the 
Savarin. 

De Peyster was one of those who take their 
meals studiously, and he tried usually to get on 
terms of friendship with the chef at any place 
he frequented. The chef at the Savarin was 
one of his most valued acquaintances. 

*'We have had eminent cooks in New York," 
said De Peyster, "including some of the highest 
salaried men in the world, with salaries of $10,- 



2(30 ^bc IRcal IHcw) l^orft 

000 or so a year — the wages of a Secretary of 
War. We have had cooks of distinction, too. 
America got its first fondness for ices from an old 
French nobleman who fled from the Revolu- 
tionary guillotine and became a fashionable 
caterer in New York. His delicate confections 
drove out the English puddings and custards. 
New York's table customs in the managing of 
knife, fork and spoon are also more Parisian 
than English. The average American child 
would be sent to bed for using a knife after the 
manner of an English duchess. Then there 
was an Italian exile, il Cavaliere Buchignani, 
who founded a restaurant in Third Avenue 
near the Academy of Music, when that was our 
grand opera house. He had all the big warb- 
lers for his guests, and they vocalized his garlic 
everywhere. 

"Many of the French cooks are college gradu- 
ates — B.A.'s and Litt. D.'s. The head waiter 
at Delmonico's sent his two sons to Yale and 
his two daughters to Vassar. 

''The chef here at the Savarin is a Bachelor of 
Arts from the University of France at Bordeaux. 
He has $7,500 a year and his meals — and a con- 
tract for ten years. He has fifty men under him 
in the kitchen. Luncheon is the only meal they 
give in large quantities, but between 11.30 in 
the morning and 3 in the afternoon they serve 
an average of 6,000 persons a day. There are 
five or six large dining-rooms, besides a Law- 



Mbcrc to i£at 



261 



Club. The kitchen is on the 



ei(>*]ith 



yers ^^ 
floor." 

De Peyster sent his card to the chef and, when 
the rush was over, he was invited up. The 
elevator to the eighth floor landed them in a 
lofty and airy space of ferocious cleanliness. 
Son Altesse le Chef showed them the multiplex 
pneumatic tube system, by which the guests' 
orders came popping up with requests for 
''roshif saignanV or ''bien cuiV — the con- 
sumption of hot roast beef sandwiches by hasty 
lawyers or brokers is stupendous. Luncheon 
is served in nine departments, each with its own 
color of order card. Twelve dumbwaiters were 
banging up and down to disprove their name. 
Bells buzzed, whistles shrieked, voices roared. 
An order received at the desk was howded out 
by the clerk, taken up by the potato cooks, 
passed along by the vegetable men, echoed by 
the specialists in soup, sung 
along by the artist in pastries, 
reverberated by the eggists, 
faintly repeated by the keen- 
eyed superintendent at the spit, 
where a great roast revolved 
before a vertical bank of coals, 
and finally acknowledged by 
the master of the game. 

Other establishments have 
even more elaborate plants. 
Places like the Holland, the 




XTTTlTTr 



262 Zhc IRcal mew ^ov\\ 

Majestic, Delmonico's, the Imperial, Sherry's, 
the Manhattan, the Grand Union, the Hoffman 
House, the Fifth Avenue and the others serve 
one continual meal from morning to morning, 
both to their thousand or more guests and to a 
ceaseless stream of casual visitors. At Sherry's 
there are sixteen chefs and 200 kitchen em- 
ployees. The Waldorf-Astoria has by far the 
largest army, in command of General Oscar. 
It is said that he has 1,500 employees under him, 
including thirty-five chefs. 

In a separate ''studio" is a pastry poet who 
designs banquet confections in the forms of 
portraits, statuary or big electric structures. 

There is something very plebeian in the 
quantities of foodstuffs devoured by the well- 
groomed cattle that feed here. In one day 
they carry away : 

5,000 loaves of bread, 

20,000 rolls, 

300 chickens, 

25 barrels of potatoes, 

6,500 eggs, 

500 gallons of milk, 

600 gallons of soup, 

1,000 pounds of roast beef, 

500 gallons of coffee. 

At Delmonico's, famous for its game, 1,500 
quail are eaten a month, and more than fifty gal- 
lons of their famous chocolate are guzzled every 
afternoon. At Maillard's even more litres of the 



Mbcrc to lEat 203 

black syrup are consumed by the women who 
flock there, thou<^h it is hinted that not all is 
chocolate that goes into the cups. 

There is some effort to mitigate the horrors 
of the noon scramble for lunch, and there are 
various clubs. The Downtown Club fills a 
large building with throngs of capitalists. The 
exchanges have their clubrooms, the lawyers 
and other professions and trades have theirs. 
At the Hardware Club, in City Hall Park, the 
Mayor usually eats. The Uptown Club, in 
the Constable Building, combines business men 
and publishers. Then there is the Women's 
Lunch Club, whose members regale themselves, 
when shopping, on salads of recherche design 
and ice cream overpoured with maple syrup 
and walnuts, and other innovations of endless 
charm. 

And so, all things considered, one who wishes 
to lunch in New York should find something to 
his taste and time. 

As the French twins had bew^ailed the lack 
of sidewalk cafes, so the Englishman cursed 
the absence of barmaids and tea shops. 

"I agree with you about the barmaids," said 
De Peyster; "they are the only women in Lon- 
don who know how to dress simply. They are 
the most artistically gowned women you have. 
But I'm glad we have no flower-girls, for I never 
saw one abroad that was pretty or clean. We 
have a few newsgirls — they're bad enough. 



264 tibe 1Rcal IRcw E^orft 

*'The tea habit has never fastened on New York. 
We get our dyspepsia otherwise. 1 don't mind 
the fact that all the pretty tea-rooms that have 
been started have failed, but 1 regret the absence 
of tea regularity in the home. Many people serve 
it if you want it, but it is not an institution as 
with you. We manage better with dinners and 
suppers. Where would you like to dine to- 
night.^" 

"Where would be the best place .^" said 

Myrtle. 

"Dining in New York is like other forms of 
religious worship. There's something for every 
taste. In London all restaurants serve the same 
thing. It's only the prices that vary. They 
have grand old roast beef, mutton that we can't 
compete with and the usual asbestos veal. 
London has six vegetables — potatoes, Brussels 
sprouts, salsify or oyster plant, parsnips, Brus- 
sels sprouts and potatoes — and boils them all. 
Then there are 246 kinds of tarts and puddings, 
including the glorious plum pudding, which they 
make one Christmas and eat the next. The 
wines are genuine and they are gloriously cheap 
— old sherries and the best champagnes for the 
price of mediocre clarets here. But the ices are 
bad, and they charge a high price for miserably 
small portions. In New York you can get al- 
most anything that has ever been heard of, served 
in every imaginable style, at every imaginable 
price." 



Mbcrc to leat 



265 



The table (Fhote dinner ranges from $2 with- 
out wine to forty eents vin compris. For forty 
cents you can get a wet napkin, a dirty table- 
cloth, tiny portions of tough meat, good spa- 
ghetti and a roast English sparrow with a bottle 
— called a half-bottle — of ''grand old vin ordi- 
naire," otherwise called red ink; or, for $1.25, 




THE SYRIAN CAFE 



you can enjoy a banquet at Martin's, as French 
as France, w^ith its mirrors, long w^all seats, 
marble tables and its lively frescoes by Leftw ich 
Dodge. There is an open air terrace in sum- 
mer — the nearest approach we have to a side- 
walk cafe. On a summer night it is fine to 
linger over your demi-tasse and look through 
your cigar smoke across Madison Square at the 
stalwart figure of Saint-Gaudens's Farragut, and 
beyond to the Garden tower above its trees. 



2()6 z\K IRcal mew l^orh 

Then there is the Cafe des Beaux-Arts, where 
for $1.50 you eat choicely and hear ItaHan sing- 
ers caroUng their gondola songs. 

In the Savoy, at the men's cafe, they give 
you a wondei-ful menu, with frequent terrapin, 
for$l. It costs more in the other rooms, but 
then you can eat in the hall of the beautiful 
Caryatides, or you can sit about in low wicker 
armchairs. One of the pleasantest and costli- 
est places is Sherry's. It might be spelled 
$herry's. In summer there is a terrace, and the 
waiters are coolishly dressed in white linen suits 
trimmed with red. In some ways it is our most 
aristocratic eating place — at least until the new 
Hotel Astor is opened. 

Cattycorner to Sherry's is the exquisite new 
Italian palazzo which James Brown Lord de- 
signed for the Delmonico dynasty — which has 
been an American proverb for elegance ever since 
it was founded in 1826 by the two humble broth- 
ers, Peter and John, from Switzerland. The 
Majestic, the Ansonia, the Cafe de Paris on the 
upper West Side, are all gorgeous shrines, where 
high quality weds high price. Best of all, they 
have roof -gardens in the summer, and there can 
be nothing more beautiful than to dine far above 
the world in the open air, under the stars, with 
the moonlit river in the distance and a spring 
breeze tugging at the napery and winnowing your 
soul. 

'* The roof -garden dining-room," said De Peys- 



Mbcic to Eat 



2G7 



ter, "is a glorious compensation for the lack of 
sidewalk cafes. Then we have Claremont, over- 
looking the ralisades, and in Central Park two 
restaurants, the Casino and M'Gowan's Pass. 
They have nearly the same beauty as the roof- 
gardens, though they are on the level — a thing 
that can't be said of quite all their guests. 
M'Gowan's Pass was named after a farm-boy 
who saved a part of the retreating 
American army in 1776 by volun- 
teering to guide the foreigners 
and then misleading them." 

"That seems to be a favorite 
New York trick," said Calverly. 
"I'd like to dine where there is 
no music." 

"The Holland House is one of 
the few that has that distinction," 
said De Peyster; "but it's a little 
too respectable for you, Calverly. 
Some night we'll go out together 
to Shanley's; it's a great place for 
game — and dead game sports. They have 
one dining-room arranged as a Roman court. 
Rector's is also very lively as well as gorgeous, 
and the scene of merrymaking there on New 
Year's Eve is one of the after-midnight sights 
of the year. The Hotel Imperial has a palm 
room that has seen some informality. We 
must go to Muschenheim's Arena; that is the 
chief stamping-ground of college men and 




A 

NEW 

YORKER 



26S Zbc IRcal IHcw U^ork 

has a fine array of trophies and athletic em- 
blems." 

''But is there any place that is particularly 
American ?" said Calverly. 

"There is the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where corn- 
bread is served with the rolls. The Grand Union 
serves a very fine steak on a plank. This is 
owned by Simeon Ford, one of the chief after- 
dinner humorists. 

''The Westminster gives a Southern dinner of 
fried chicken and sweet potatoes. Then there's 
Healy's, which makes a specialty of dinners of 
nothing but beefsteak. This is served in the 
crypt on barrels and boards. You wear an apron 
up to your chin and eat the luscious tenderloin 
served on bread, without knife or fork and with 
only celery and beer to accompany it." 

Miss Collis, however, was tired of American 
food. She said she wanted something foreign. 

"Almost every nationality is represented by 
a dining-room and a cook," said De Peyster. 
"The lady from San Francisco is tired of Chi- 
nese food, but there are dozens of more or less 
picturesque chop suey places all over town. The 
meals are cooked and served by Chinese, but 
the patrons are mostly of a low class, and negroes 
seem especially fond of Celestial fare. Chicken 
is their common bond of friendship. 

"There are many French restaurants besides 
those I've spoken of — the Logerot, Mouquin's 
two places, the Lafayette-Brevoort, which took 



Mbcrc to Eat 269 

the place where Martin's grew famous before it 
moved up to Delmonico's old place. At these 
j)laces you can practise your French on the 
waiter, though if it's very bad he will answer 
in English." 

*'Of all insults that's the worst," said Cal- 
verly. " A waiter ought to be discharged for it." 

*' There are other places where you can polish 
your German accent and get Teutonic archi- 
tecture as well as beer, Rhine wines and solids. 
The German resorts are too numerous to count, 
and the German usually has his whole family 
with him wherever he goes. His wife and his 
children sit round and take their beer in a man- 
ner shocking to many Americans, but very beau- 
tiful from a domestic point of view. Scheffel 
Hall and the Hofbrauhaus are reproductions of 
German beer palaces, with walls and rafters 
covered with drinking scenes and legends from 
German poetry and with steins of elaborate de- 
sign. Terrace Garden is a huge establishment 
with music and vaudeville, and, in summer, 
Strauss's comic operas are given in German. 

"The musicians and the musical critics frequent 
Luchow's in Fourteenth Street or Mock's in For- 
ty-second Street. Reisenweber's and Pabst's 
Grand Circle are two others where the cooking 
is apt to be good and the beer sure to be. In 
fact, you can hardly turn round without strik- 
ing some odd German resort, from Atlantic Gar- 
den down on the Bowery up to Pabst's in Har- 



270 ^be IReal IRcw ^ovk 

lem and on to High Bridge. There is one over- 
looking the entrance to the Speedway. 

" The Itahans have some of our best restau- 
rants. The Moretti dinner is famous, and Mor- 
ello's has been a rival for years. Then there are 
two places claiming the name of Roversi's, and 
the so-called Spaghetti House, besides Gaz- 
zo's, Zangheri's (which has a so-called 'Jolly 
Dungeon'), Maria da Prato's, Gonfarone's, Guf- 
fanti's, dozens everywhere. 

" The Hungarian restaurants are next in num- 
ber to the Italian, and include the Hotel Hun- 
garia, the Cafe Boulevard, Little Hungary, Lor- 
ber's Art Nouveau in Grand Street, with its 
Cupid's Cafe, and many others. 

'*Far down in Washington Street is a Syrian 
cafe where rice is cooked with everything, in- 
cluding curdled milk and sweetened milk. They 
serve also a sort of tamale made of rice, spice 
and cabbage. In Madison Street is a Greek 
restaurant where the favorite dishes are chicken 
in rice and bread fried in honey. 

"There are also restaurants kept by Turks, 
Swedes, Finns, Russians, Bohemians " 

"That's what I want to see," said Miss Collis. 
" Something truly Bohemian. That's what Paris 
is so famous for. Is there such a thing in New 
York.^" 

De Peyster met her promptly. "We'll have 
to go on the hunt for it this very night." 



Chapter XV 



THE HUNT FOR BOHEMIA BOHEMIA! WHERE AND WHAT 

IS IT? THE OLD BOHEMIA AT " MARIA's " PROFES- 
SIONAL BOHEMIANS IMITATION BOHEMIANISM THE 

SECRET HAUNTS OF BOHEMIANS QUICK GROWTH OF 

THE BOHEMIAN CAFES CAFE LIBERTY HUNGARIAN 

DISHES, SAUCES, WINES AND MUSIC THE ONLY BOHE- 
MIANS ARE HUNGARIANS 



''T1 niERE is Bohemia?" 

V V "Where is to-morrow?'' 
"Well, then, what is Bohemia?" 
"There are as many definitions as there are 
stars in the Milky Way. What would be Bo- 
hemian in a society woman would be snobbishly 
conventional in an editor's wife. What would 
be Bohemian in an editor's wife would be prim 
indeed in a chorus girl. Bohemia is largely a 
matter of income and profession and personal- 
ity. Bohemia may be one of the tables at a 
church festival; and philistinism may sit and 
eat its spaghetti with knife and fork in the din- 
giest little forty-cent dinner table d'hote restau- 
rant in Twenty-eighth Street. But here comes 
a literary man, let us ask him." 

They were seated in " Peacock Alley" at the 
Waldorf. Th-ey saw Simes approaching; he 



272 ^be IRcal mew L^orft 

had a harrowed look and was plainly making 
for the cafe. 

"We were talking of Bohemia," said De 
Peyster. " Miss Collis wonders if there is any 
Bohemianism in New York." 

"There are oodles of it," said Simes, "or of 
violent attempts at it. When I first came to 
New Yawk I was, of course, full of Murger's 
'Vie de Boheme,' and was restless to find Bo- 
hemia in New Yawk. I felt that I was a genius, 
and that every genius is a gipsy by nature. 
Soon after I arrived I made some acquaintances 
who constantly spoke of Bohemia and 'Maria's' 
as the same place. I was finally honored with 
an invitation to come along. It was down in 
Twelfth Street — a slovenly little basement, and 
what we should have called a cheap bo'ding- 
house down So'th. I was most amazed at 
the long yahdsticks of bread and the enormous 
bowls of soup, and the way they had of sprinkling 
powdered cheese oveh everything, soup included. 
And they put large chunks of ice in the claret — - 
a combination I was brought up to believe a 
sacrilege. I was taken out in the kitchen and 
introduced to Maria with a great flourish. She 
was a large Italian cook, with her sleeves rolled 
up, and it ratheh amazed me to see how defer- 
ential her guests were, and how proud anybody 
was to whom she spoke an extra word. I un- 
derstood this betteh when I learned that a good 
many of the men owed her for their bo'd, and 



.\i"~;i>j4)».^ 







A BUSY SATURDAY NIGHT 



^be Ibunt for Bobcnua 273 

that it was generally believed that one or two 
of them got their meals free for acting — as — well, 
we would call them — cappehs, or pullers-in, 
anywhere else; but here they were called mas- 
tehs of the ceremonies. 

''There was what they called an al fresco 
dining-room, which consisted of a large shed 
in the back yahd. The guests were a strange 
ragout. Some of them were plainly business 
men tryin' to understand what they had struck; 
othehs of them were hahd-headed philistines 
making a pitiful attempt at being hilarious in a 
talented manneh. My friends pointed out the 
celebrities. Some of them were long-haired, 
but few of them had even that supposed sign of 
temperament ; most of them were only seedy. 
The most curious thing about the celebrities was 
that, while I had been reading all the magazine 
and book reviews for yeahs and yeahs, I had 
never even heard of any of these great men. I 
have heard of them since, as I have heard of 
certain druggists and grocers and policemen, 
through living in the same town. A few of them 
had a tired look, as if they had been honestly 
working — these were the newspapeh men, who 
are driven like dogs in a treadmill, who often 
spend brilliant abilities on unworthy jobs and 
whose really good work is published anony- 
mously and crowded out of memory by the next 
day's news. 

"But most of the Bohemians were simply 
18 ^. 



274 ^be IRcal IRcw l!)orh 

loafelis, who preferred red ink to black, ciga- 
rettes to pens, and who would ratheh talk about 
the great things they were going to do than to do 
something good, and they made themselves 
proud by finding fault with the work of men who 
were succeeding, instead of giving the public 
the advantage of their own superior gifts. 

"During that evening I heard every editor in 
New York called a low-browed ignoramus, and 
it seemed to be the unforgivable sin in any 
author to get a story, a book or poem into actual 
print. 

"Well, as the dinneh went along it grew mer- 
rieh and merrieh, and there were some witty 
things said. But you will hear witty things in 
the conversations of a street cah conductor and 
the motorman. There was a good deal of fa- 
miliarity in the behavior of some of the couples 
and a certain amount of love-making that would 
have been more impressive if it had not been 
so promiscuous. Then there were speeches and 
stories, songs and poems. Many of these were 
very pleasant to heah, and none of them was 
without a certain charm, but they almost all 
lacked the final earnestness, the real grip that 
comes from constant exercise in trying to get a 
grip. They usually lacked real conviction and 
real workmanship. They showed the 'pren- 
tice hand or the lazy hand, and you began to 
realize how it was that these men did not get 
their works more often printed, why these 



ZiK 1bunt for Bobcniia 



275 



women did not get tlieir books finislied or pub- 
lished, and why tliese submerged actresses were 
always the victims and never the victors over the 
* jealousy' of stars. 

*'l had come to New Yawk full of illusions 
and full of detummination. I found my illusions 
siippin' away like smoke wreaths and my de- 
tummination evaporatin' into a lazy 'what's the 
use ? ' 

**Then I took myself by the back of the neck 
and said : ' See heah, Peteh Simes, Bohemia may 
be a ve'y nice place, and fo' those that like that 
sawt of thing it is about the sawt of thing they 
like; but fo' a man that wants to w^ork and take 
a pride in his work and to keep up a detummina- 
tion to make that work as good as possible and 
as successful as possible, Bohemia is the wrong 
place. 

''I like to go back now and then, as I like to 
go to Coney Island, once or twice a yeah, but it 
is a place of more pathos than recreation to me, 
for the only Bohemians that work are the news- 
paper men and the newspaper artists, and they 
are grinding their souls away with little to show 
for it. As for the rest, the dreamers, they are 
still dreamin'. Some day they'll wake up and 
say, like Rip Van Winkle, 'Wlieah am I .^ 
Whence came these gray hairs ? How the world 
has changed!' 

"Then there are the professional Bohemians, 
heah just as in Paris, who posture and pretend 



276 zbc IRcal mew ^ov\{ 

and get their meals and drinks free. They are 
meant to draw the gullible philistines to certain 
restaurants, where they will forget what bad 
stuff they are drinkin' and eatin' in the raptur- 
ous thought that they are makin' a visit to 
Bohemia. 

"Of co'se, there is anotheh sawt of life that 
is sometimes mistaken for Bohemia. That is the 
relaxation of hahd-working writers, artists, mu- 
sicians and actors and doctors and lawyers and 
the like, who amuse themselves after a liahd 
day's work by informal dinnehs in odd nooks, 
where hilarity attracts no attention. They have 
earned the right to play gipsy, and they like to 
call themselves Bohemians; but they are not; 
they are simply good, honest, hahd- working 
blacksmiths, taking a little recess, in ordeh 
that they may renew their strength for the anvil 
and the sledge and go back and work some mo'. 
If that were Bohemia I should be a Bohemian. 
But the true Bohemians, the true gipsies, do no 
work and attain no success, but dawdle idly from 
failure to failure, thinking they are happy be- 
cause they run away from work or hardship. 
Little they know that the true rapture is in wrest- 
ling with circumstances, diggin' at the beautiful 
in the ugliness around it, till the blood comes 
from undeh the fingeh nails. You must pah- 
don me if I have fallen into the sermon habit, 
but I've been so long with that blamed preacheh 
from Terre Haute." 



Z\K Ibunt for ffiobcinia 



277 



"Will you join us to-night in a search for your 
Bohemia ?" 

'' I'd like to," said Simes, *' but I've promised 
to show the preacheh some mo' of ouah inerad- 
icable virtues," and with a thirsty 
cough and an apologetic bow 
he was awav in search of the 
Pierian spring. 

Calverly decided that he 
was not much interested in 
Bohemia. He judged from 
Simes's description that it 
must be "deucedly vulgah" and 
" a ghastly baw." Miss De Peys- 
ter a2:reed with him and decided 
that she did not care to go. 
Calverly thought that a quiet 
evening at home would be more 
enjoyable than anything else, and 
Miss De Peyster agreed with him again and 
suggested her home. 

Miss Collis looked her disappointment. She 
had always idealized Bohemia. It was identical 
in her mind with Paris and art student life. It 
was her chief grievance against New York that 
the art student life did not flourish here as in 
Paris. 

De Peyster admitted that the Anglo-Saxon 
temperament could never hope to amuse itself 
or take its art as religiously as the Latin nature. 
But there were compensations in other direc- 




278 Zhc IRcal mew l^orft 

tions, and New York has an extensive colony of 
artists, as well as a few schools in which the 
standard is quite as high as in Paris, and the 
students amuse themselves well, though not so 
elaborately or with such co-operation as in Paris. 
There is no Montmartre here, no Quartier Latin, 
no *' Quat'z'-Arts" — the police would hardly 
allow this last. And there is no Bal Bullier, 
more's the pity, though there are dozens of 
dance halls where the same class of women will 
insist on no more formalities of introduction. 

"It would be foolish," De Peyster continued, 
"for New York to pretend to compete with Paris 
in the pursuit of happiness for its own sake. To 
them it is a science and a religion; to us happi- 
ness is either a vice, a relaxation or something 
hidden away in the depths of business and prog- 
ress. We can only console ourselves for our 
many inferiorities by the many magnificent qual- 
ities in which New York excels Paris and the 
beautiful promise that all good Americans shall 
go to Paris when they die. Alas, most of us 
will never take up happiness as a profession 
until that time." 

Miss Collis had her heart set on seeing Bo- 
hemia. She believed that she would enjoy it in 
spite of Simes. De Peyster volunteered to go 
a-hunting with her. 

"But your sister does not care to go and I 
have no other chaperon," she said. 

" Good Lord ! A chaperon in Bohemia — the 



tEbc Ibimt for Bobcinia 279 

two terms are contradictory. Now is your chance 
to show whether or not you have any of your 
boasted Boliemian blood in your veins. 1 be- 
lieve you are afraid to go Bohemianizing with 
me. 

Miss Collis was not one who took a dare. She 
held her head up proudly and flashed back at 
him defiantly: 

**I dare and I will!" 

And so it was agreed. Then arose the prob- 
lem where to go. 

**I should like to go to Maria's," said Miss 
Collis, *'and see if Mr. Simes has not maligned 
it. 

"Oh, the old Maria is a thing of the past," 
said De Peyster; "she made so much money in 
her dingy little place that she moved uptown. 
Two clubs grew out of the crowd that used 
to gather at the old place. The first was the 
Edenia, which met upstairs around her rheu- 
matic piano; out of this grew a Revolutionary 
Committee that wanted a little more comfort, 
better meals and a higher class of entertainment. 
So they called themselves the Pleiades, and they 
meet every Sunday night at some large hotel or 
restaurant, where sometimes two hundred of 
them gather together and enjoy a really good 
dinner. They wear evening clothes, as a rule, 
and they do not rent them. The women are 
well dressed and their model of behavior is not 
the artist model. Every Sunday night they have 



280 Zbc IReal mew ^ovk 

as guest of honor some prominent personage, 
and their Christmas and annual dinners are bril- 
liant events. 

"The 'Black Cat' is another Bohemian re- 
sort that has suffered from prosperity. It be- 
gan as an imitation of the 'Chat Noir' in Paris, 
and later the proprietors opened a much more 
elaborate place in Twenty-eighth Street. 

"Down in Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Streets 
there are several quaint places where a few 
cronies still gather. They try, as a rule, to keep 
these rookeries a secret, knowing that as soon as 
a place is branded as Bohemian a mob of philis- 
tines rush in and spoil it. Not only does the 
crowd lose quality, but the food as well, and the 
proprietors are infected with the craze for rapid 
wealth. There are dozens of places in New 
York whose habitues love them so jealously that 
they organize themselves into little lodges. 

"One of these is much haunted by sculptors. 
The proprietor was formerly a chef to the Italian 
King. On the walls are photographs of him in 
an officer's uniform — over the brim of his hat 
spills the tail of one of those roosters which he 
can cook so extremely well that you think you are 
eating a bashful pullet. When you arrive you 
are permitted to go into the kitchen and drink 
the health of the patron in a petit verre of his own 
mixture. You can stand by and watch your 
dinner cook in spotlessly clean surroundings, 
and if you are complimentary enough you will 



^be Ibunt for Bobcntia 



281 



later be invited to have brandy to burn in your 
coffee. After you have been there a few times 
the signora is very apt to embrace you when you 
come in and pat you on the shoulder when you 
compliment her on the spaghetti. I would take 
you there but for the terrific promise I gave as 
my initiation fee. For the sculptor who took me 
there said in an awestruck tone: *Come any 
time you like, bring any girl you like, but for 
God's sake don't bring any ladies!' Some of 
the best known artist models are there, and they 
talk art as earnestly as they try to inspire it. 

" Down on Seventh Avenue near Twenty-sixth 
Street is Guffanti's. You can tell that this is an 
artistic place because there 
are stains on the tablecloth 
and because the women and 
men begin to hold hands 
about the time they reach 
their second glass of Bar- 
ber a. The waiters are in 
shirt sleeves, you lay your 
hats and coats on the billiard 
table, the proprietor ad- 
dresses you as almost his 
equal, and the spaghetti on 
spaghetti night is a feast in 
itself. 

" One of the liveliest places in town is the Cafe 
Francis in Thirty-fifth Street. There are three 
orchestras here, and you sit along wall seats be- 




SPAGHETTI 



282 ZV)C IReat IRcw IPorft 

hind marble-topped tables as in Paris. It is a 
place much affected by painters, sculptors, 
actors, as well as newspaper men from the nearby 
Herald. You will see some very pretty women 
and some very jovial parties here. The music 
is really worth while, the long-haired French trio 
being especially good. 

"The most showy places are down on the 
East Side, and, if you have pluck, you will go 
there." • 

She had the pluck, and felt proud of it, till he 
called for her shortly after six, and in evening 
dress. 

'' Bohemia in those things ?'' she asked. 

"Yes," he replied, "and, what's more, in an 
automobile. Society people crowd into Bo- 
hemia and look at each other. If there is any . 
room left in an odd corner — or rather in the cen- 
tre of the room— the true Bohemians slip in. 
But they have about as large a place in Bohemia 
as the American Indians have in America. We 
foreign invaders call ourselves Americans, and it 
is very consistent that we should call ourselves 
Bohemians when we annex this new territory." 

"But I have put on my plainest things," she 
objected; "you'll have to wait until I change." 

"No one will notice the difference, and you 
may get credit for being a real Bohemian. You 
cannot look more beautiful in ermine — M- Myr- 
tle." The name still came rather hard. 

"All right, G-Gerald; I am a true sport." 



Z\K Ibunt for ©obcniia 2S3 

When they were scudding down Broadway in 
the dusk of the automol)ile lie tried to hokl her 
hand — "just for good fellowship," he explained. 
But she would none of it, even when he insisted 
that all true Bohemians must know the ''grip." 

They went first to the Cafe Boulevard, on 
Second Avenue and Tenth Street. It was too 
cool for the guests to dine on the balconies, which 
they fill in summertime, but the place was 
alight and the strains of Hungarian music came 
splashing through the windows. Myrtle's heart 
lit up like the windows of the cafe, and she felt 
that she was in a foreign land as they strolled 
through the rooms decorated in the Art Nouveau 
and through the grotto. They wandered here 
and there through the many rooms, all of them 
full and voltaic with high spirits. The pro- 
prietor, who had seen his little out-of-the-way 
cabaret grow to an establishment accommodating 
850 visitors, greeted De Peyster with cordiality. 
He offered him a table pleasantly located on a 
mezzanine floor, overlooking the main dining- 
room, but De Peyster stopped short. He saw 
that his next-table neighbors would be A. J. 
Joyce, "Ananias" Blake and two young women 
whose manner already showed the influence of 
the Hungarian cocktail, made of plum brandy 
and called Slivovitz. They were also making 
rapid inroads on a bottle which De Peyster 
recognized as Szegszcirdi Voros, from the Royal 
Hungarian Government cellars at Buda-Pesth, 



284 ^be IRcal mew l^ork 

which is well worth the price, since it costs but 
one dollar, title and all. 

Joyce came forward, and very effusively ex- 
claimed : 

"Won't you join us, you and your — cousin?" 

De Peyster could have throttled him for that 
last word, but he remembered his breeding, 
and with a sweet smile answered: 

*' Thank you, my cousin and I just dropped 
in to look around; we have an engagement else- 
where." 

Myrtle started to protest, but he gave her a 
silencing look, and by pure will power silently 
dragged her from the room. 

Once outside, she gave voice to her disap- 
pointment, but he promised her something still 
more foreign, and ordered the chauffeur to take 
them to the Cafe Liberty, in East Houston Street. 

As they drove down Second Avenue they 
seemed to be in a foreign country, reading such 
signs as "Karatsonyi & Kmetz," and a little 
shop marked " Lesezirkel, Ungarischer Importir- 
ter Tabak," where, when her parents are away, 
the beautiful little Hungarienne, Erna Roswaag, 
aged eleven, and her little seven-year-old brother, 
will sell you the latest number of the Pesti Hir- 
lap in the most charming manner. A little further 
down is the Swiss Benevolent Society's Home, 
and on East Fourth Street is the hall where, on 
every Sunday night, the Roumanians gather for 
a dance. 



Z\K Ibunt for Bobcmia 



285 



The automobile soon turned into the twist- 
ing streets of the Jewish quarter of the East 
Side, where the signs were in Hebrew and an- 
nounced that the food was "kosher" — that is 
to say, that it was clean — cooked in conformity 
with the laws of the Jewish faith. One dingy 
hole in the wall bore the ambitious and am- 
biguous sign, "Cafe de I'Europe, Inlandische 
und Auslandische Zeitungen." Across the 




WHEN TWO HUNGARIANS PLAY CARDS 



street was the Cafe Liberty, familiarly known 
as "Little Hungary." Here, too, as in all 
Bohemian resorts in New York, the crowd has 
grown from a couple to 500. 

A few years ago the owner of a modest cafe 
gave a dinner in his wine-cellar on Friday night — 
that being the eve of the Jewish Sabbath. The 
sharp-nosed sleuths who are eternally ransack- 



286 ^bc IRcal 1Rcw ll)orft 

ing New York for something odd found out 
this cafe, and now crowded dinners are given 
every night in greatly enlarged space, that threat- 
ens to absorb the entire building, where at 
present six or eight large rooms accommodate 
the meetings of the secret societies of the East 
Side, and where the ballroom is the scene of 
Hungarian dances and weddings. Friday night 
is still the great night of this cafe, and it is 
usually necessary to engage the tables ahead. 
De Peyster led the way down into the cellar 
and through two dining-rooms, with long tables 
and walls decorated with love scenes and Hun- 
garian legends, into the more quaint room of the 
great casks. 

They chose a table next to one of the black 
old tuns. A page in gold and blue uniform with- 
out command brought them a tiny glass of Sliv- 
ovitz. The table d'hote dinner followed, course 
by course. Csiga leves — a soup containing 
noodles shaped like snails — preceded American 
fish with a Hungarian sauce. Among other of 
the many courses were the Hungarian national 
dish, the gulijas (goulash) and ^paprikas csirke, 
or chicken hot with paprika; a salad led to almas 
retes (applestrudel), a delicious light pastry filled 
with sliced apples, almonds and raisins; the 
cheese was Liptauer, and the demi-tasse was 
crowned with a puff of whipped cream. 

With each course was served some Hungarian 
wine. With the soup came on a dark liquor 



Z\K Ibunt for Bobcinia 2^7 

drawn direct from one of the casks througli a 
rubber tube. Hungarian wines were too sweet 
to satisfy the dry taste of De Peyster, but they 
delight a woman's pahite, especially when she 
does not realize that the morning-after head is 
due to sugar more than to alcohol. 

Myrtle noted that as fast as she emptied her 
glass the waiter filled it again. It is a pleasant 
but a dangerous custom at this place to put no 
limit on the quantity, the price for dinner includ- 
ing the individual capacity. 

Some of the wines were poured from flagons 
by the incessant wine-boy, but soon the pictur- 
esque implement called the *'glass-heber" was 
set on the table. This is a bottle with a giraffe 
neck, inverted in a tall rack. It has a little auto- 
matic glass stopper and one has only to press 
his glass against it to have it refilled. 

Myrtle took great pleasure in reading the wine 
list, with its curious and unearthly names, such 
as Szamarodni, Szanto, Szegszardi, Tokayi Asszu, 
Slivovitz and Borovicska. The simplest name, 
Erlauer, masked the deadliest wine, a thick red 
fluid which the Hungarians call bull's blood; 
it leaves its stain upon the glass and is heavier 
than a thrice concentrated port. 

The general good fellowship around the 
crowded tables, the unfettered laughter and the 
careless jokes joined with the serial wines to 
hypnotize the girl from San Francisco. But, 
most of all, the Hungarian music intoxicated her. 



288 z\K IRcal mew l^orh 

The leader, with his frankly admiring and tena- 
cious stare as he drew honey from his fiddle; 
the other musicians, in their picturesque cos- 
tumes, and the wild arpeggios and tremolos of 
the man hammering the Hungarian piano, the 
''czimbalom" — all united in wild and irresistible 
strains of barbaric candor and thrilling rhythm. 
Myrtle's heart filled with an amorous longing 
when they broke into the csardas. 

De Peyster, too, felt his Fifth Avenue com- 
posure giving way to the Magyar passion, and 
he found himself telling Myrtle how beautiful 
she was, and how dear, in a language that re- 
gretted its everyday English and longed for a 
command of some Hunnish spice. After dinner 
was lingeringly finished they adjourned upstairs. 
Here was a troupe of troubadors playing and 
singing like mad. The crowd listened with eager 
zest, hissing down those who made love immod- 
erately or joining in any tune that grew familiar. 
The women were given fanciful souvenirs and 
many of them puffed frankly at cigarettes. 

It was midnight before the merrymakers be- 
gan to dwindle homeward. Gerald and Myrtle 
— the names came glibly now — were among the 
last to leave, and as they re-entered their auto- 
mobile in the cool dark air she murmured: 

"The only true Bohemians are the Hungari- 
ans." 

And now she let him hold her hand — ^just to 
show that she was really a Bohemian. 




A GALA NIGHT AT THE CAFE BOULEVARD 



Chapter XVI 

SUMMER IN NEW YORK THE SUMMER EXODUS FATHER 

KNICKERBOCKER A GRASS-WIDOWER IN SUMMER 

SCHEMES FOR FIGHTING THE HEAT SUMMER COSTUME 

ROOF -GARDEN DINING THE SUFFERING SLUMS 

MAY DAY AND MAY QUEENS ATHLETICS IN TOWN 

THE COACHES THE RACETRACKS THE COOL EN- 
VIRONS OF NEW YORK 

THE next morning Calverly ran up to take 
breakfast with the De Peysters. They 
called it breakfast, though it came at the lunch 
hour. People who have been abroad are fond 
of such twists. Calverly seemed uneasy and 
kept dropping his monocle into his plate, then 
scouring it with much assiduity. At length he 
said, apropos of nothing in particular: 

"Do you know, Gerald, old boy, there's some- 
thing I rather think I ought to tell you ?'' 

" What's the matter ? Don't you like this scarf 
I'm wearing.^" 

"Oh, that's not it! Truth is, old fellow, I'm 
engaged to be married." 

"Great Csesar! How did you ever get cour- 
age to propose ?" 

"Oh, I — I was — assisted, you might say." 

"Well, fancy anyone accepting such a duffer 
as you! Lord, you'll make a wonderful hus- 
19 



290 z\)C IRcal IRcw l^ork 

band ! Who's the unfortunate woman ? Do I 
know her? She must have been desperate." 

"Be careful, Gerald," said Miss De Peyster; 
"you're forgetting yourself." 

'*But it seems so ridiculous to think of him 
engaged. He's a nice enough man's man, but 
he'd bore a woman to death. Well, tell me, 
what is her name .^ I'll telegraph her my con- 
dolences. Come, come, who is she .^" 
"It's your — sister." 

"Um! um — hum! ahem! I — I congratulate 
you both. I'm sure you'll be terribly happy. 
You're — oh, ah — um — so congenial. But when 
did all this happen .^" 

"Last night, when you and Miss Collis were 
out in Bohemia. We — I — well— before I knew 
it, old chap, I was engaged, wasn't I — Miss De 
— Consuelo, dear g-girl .^" 

"Yes," said Consuelo, furious at the gaucherie 
of the whole affair. 

"W^ell," said De Peyster, anxious to retrieve 
himself, "there's one thing about it; my sister 
must be genuinely in love with you, for she swore 
she'd marry nothing but a title." 

This happy suggestion seemed only to make 
matters worse. At length Calverly said: 

"Well, I am to be a peer, it seems. I had a 
letter that my elder brother cannot live more 
than a few months. I've got to go back at once. 
Terribly doleful, isn't it ? I told your sister last 
night, and she was most sympathetic, and be- 



Summer in 1Hc\v l!)orh 291 

fore I knew it I had told her how much I — I — 
how 1 have grow^n so — deuced ly fond of her, 
don't you know ? And besides, when I have the 
title, I'll need a lot more money, you know — 
er — that is — of course, that sounds rather raw — 
but — what a deucedly warm day it is all of a 
sudden, isn't it ? Seems like summer, doesn't 
it ?" Then, with a desperate effort to change 
the subject, he exclaimed : 

"By the way, old chap, what do you people 
do in New York when summer comes ?" 

"We get out," Miss De Peyster broke in, still 
angry. "New York is simply deserted in sum- 
mer. There is not a soul in town." 

Her brother smiled. 

"Not a soul, eh.^ Perhaps you're right. All 
the souls are flying to the seaside and the 
mountains, but there are bodies enough broiling 
on the gridiron of the streets." 

It seemed so good to be talking of something 
besides engagements that he ran on: 

"Winters are comparatively mild and zero is 
very rare — the thermometer sometimes skips it 
for years at a time. But there are a few weeks 
in summer when New York is like a preparatory 
school for Hades. The only things that can be 
said in its favor are that, in the first place, it is 
easy to go away to some of the innumerable 
beaches and watering resorts; and, in the second 
place, it is not half so bad as we think it is. 

"People from smaller cities West or South 



292 z\K 1Real mew ^ofw 

think New York is a summer resort, and, save 
for the occasional spasms of ferocious heat and 
the humidity that fairly stings, the old town is 
a comfy place to summer in. The nights are 
almost always cool, and the science of fighting 
the heat has certainly been carried to a higher 
point in New York than anywhere else, at least 
among working cities, for New York is not like 
the other tropical places where one takes a siesta 
in the middle of the day. 

"The first day of June there is a general ex- 
odus of people who can afford to go, and there 
are miles and miles of residence streets where 
nearly every house has its doors and windows 
boarded up, with no one at home but a poor 
cat that has been forgotten and left to starve. 
But all Americans work, and manv of the rich- 
est men take no more than a two weeks' vaca- 
tion — as much as they allot to their poorest 
clerks. Thousands and thousands of them live 
nearby in cottages or hotels and go out every 
evening, or take at least what you English call 
a Friday-to-Monday. 

"To a large extent. New York in the summer 
time is a big bachelor apartment house. The 
women who stay in town are either very poor 
or have business reasons for staying. The busi- 
ness of some of them is the entertainment of 
grass- widowers. The loneliness of deserted hus- 
bands, who work hard all day and find all the 
respectable homes shut up in the evening, has 



Summer in Ucw ^ov\\ 



203 



its enormous effect on the domestic problem. 
The divorce courts would not be nearly so over- 
crowded if American women would brinjy them- 
selves to endure the same hardships that their 
husbands go through during the worst part of 
the year. 

'*To the New Yorker 
who knows his town in the 
height of the season from 
autumn to late spring it 
truly seems that there is 
nobody here in summer. 
To the stranger from the 
smaller cities it is still 
packed and jammed with 
millions of hurrying and 
sweltering citizens. And 
while Father Knickerbock- 
er's wife may have de- 
serted him and may be spending her days in a 
bathing suit and her nights on a moonlit piazza 
overlooking the ocean, there is usually a faith- 
ful stenographer who dresses quite as well, whom 
the stranger in town thinks to be Mrs. Knicker- 
bocker when they are seen together dining on 
some roof and sitting out some roof-garden en- 
tertainment. But the facts all come out in the 
wash — and the divorce court is the great 
laundry." 

Calverly opened his mouth and dropped his 
monocle to say : 




A ROOF-GARDEN STUNT 



294 Zhc IRcal IRcw ^ov\\ 

*'But you spoke of New Yorkers having car- 
ried the science of fighting the heat further 
than anybody else. Of course, that is only 
cheerful Yankee brag, I know, but what have 
you done to surpass dear old London ? We 
Englishmen have our blessed Thames, with its 
miles of cottages, with lawns going right to the 
river edge, and its punts, and swans, and the 
cozy little inns, and all that sort of thing. You 
haven't anything to equal that, you know you 
haven't ; now have you ? " 

"If the Thames were not nailed down," said 
De Peyster, "we'd either buy it or steal it. It 
is too good for you English people. London 
has no right to such a pretty toy, for London 
does not know what summer is. Your winters 
are infinitely worse than our summers, and I'd 
rather have a thousand of our hot days than 
a hundred of your pea-soup fogs." 

"But I was asking about the science of keep- 
ing cool," persisted Calverly. "What have you 
done about that .^ " 

"Well, in the first place, there is ice. Till a 
few years ago it was almost an unknown thing 
in London. Now it is treated as a sort of 
splendid luxury, a quaint little American affec- 
tation. There is probably more of it given away 
by New York charities, like the Herald Free 
Ice Fund and others, than all London con- 
sumes in a summer. Then there is the iced 
drink, particularly the divine mint julep, where 



Sunitncr in H^cw ^ovh 295 

you bathe your fevered brow in ice cold leaves 
while you sip nectar. 

"There are thousands of other ingenious de- 
vices for distracting the mind from too much 
brooding on the rise of the thermometer. There 
is, for instance, the cooling gin rickey, and there 
is a curious fact about it. Its distino^uishinfi^ 
feature is the juice of the lime, and the sale 
varies so much according to the heat that the 
lime has become the greatest gamble in the 
produce market. It is vitally important that 
the limes should be fresh ; so, if a ship comes up 
from the Tropics and unloads its cargo on a 
boilingly hot day, the limes may sell for as high 
as $49 a barrel. If, however, the ship arrives 
here in cool weather the cargo may sell as low 
as 49 cents a barrel. There are thousands of 
old clubmen who watch for the first consign- 
ment of limes as eagerly as the farmer looks for 
the first robin redbreast. 

''Then we have learned how to dress in sum- 
mer. It is still an article of religion in London 
that a high hat and a frock coat must be worn 
even on the most stifling days. Over here 
both office boy and millionaire dress as coolly 
as decency permits, and the women one degree 
cooler. 

"We have hundreds of electric fans where 
London has one. We have our roof-garden 
dining-rooms and our music-halls on the roof; 
and there are one or two steamers that give 



296 ^be IReal IRcw l^orft 

vaudeville every evening as they plow the cool 
waters down the Bay." 

"But what about the suffering in the slums ?" 
asked Calverly. 

"Well, it is frightful," said De Peyster, "and 
there is no denying it. At night thousands and 
thousands flock to the roofs and sprawl on the 
tin that has baked all day, or they clutter the 
fire-escapes or huddle on the stoops and the 
curbs. On the worst nights they are now per- 
mitted to sleep in some of the parks. Unless 
the night is cool the pitiful wretches can only 
suffer till the angry daybreak brings a greater 
suffering. Their lot is that of the wretches of 
the Bible who said at night, 'Would God that 
it were morn !' and in the morning, * Would God 
that it were night!' It is terrible, terrible, ter- 
rible, especially for the children. There is 
nothing to say in palliation except that it might 
be worse, and that their misery has plenty of 
company around the globe. When summer is 
summer everybody must bake. The rich at 
the seaside and in the mountains cannot escape 
from the sun; the people in the small cities and 
villages feel the lash; the farmers fry in the 
fields and their women go mad in the 
kitchens. 

" We do the best we can to make it better here 
in New York. If you look on the map you will 
see that we are as close to the Equator as Spain. 
We are in just about the same degree of latitude 



Sinnmcr in H^cw ^ov\\ 297 

as Madrid and Naples, while London is nearly 
opposite Labrador. 

" Charity is tireless here in New York. Every 
day in summer thousands of children are taken 
to the country or on picnics down the Bay. 
The Fire Department flushes the tenement 
streets with streams of cold water, wettinc: down 
the panting horses and the hundreds of children 
who enjoy the shower-bath. Most of the 
horses, as in London, wear bonnets of straw all 
summer w^ith most coquettish effect. Free con- 
certs are given on all the recreation piers, and 
the policeman usually looks the other way when 
the newsboys in their costume of two garments 
take a dip head foremost into the fountains. 
And there are many public baths in both the 
Hudson and the East River where men and 
women can swim. Besides it does not cost 
much time or money to reach the greatest pleas- 
ure circus in the world. Coney Island." 

De Peyster was on one of his pet hobbies 
now, and he went on with enthusiasm to point 
out that for those who cannot get out of town 
there are the parks. The first of May finds 
the streets leading to Central Park filled with 
processions of little boys and girls going out for 
a Maypole dance on the greens. This is one 
of the few towns in this country where the good 
old English custom of the Queen of the May is 
preserved, and it is one of the prettiest touches 
of the spring to see the little gamines, in their 



298 z\)c IRcal mew ^ovk 

cheap white dresses, marching solemnly in line, 
with the crown of flowers on the proud head of 
their queen. On May Day at least 4,000 chil- 
dren invade the Park, dressed in their merriest. 
On the 21st of May, 1904, a number of Tam- 
many picnics were given; to the children 240 
permits were issued for parties, and there were 
over 35,000 children in the Park, well fed and 
gaily entertained that day. Then there are the 
lakes, where the children sail their yachts, and 
where retired old mariners in their second 
cliildhood practise the nautical sciences in 
miniature, as they do at the Round Pond in 
Kensington Gardens. One of them put up a 
cup last summer, and there is a little boat- 
house where the old and young children store 
their navies. There are guards and a life- 
saving crew whose business it is to wade in 
up to their knees, pull out the children, who fall 
in by the dozen, and then empty them out. 
lustead of having barrels to roll them on they 
have kegs and tin buckets to fit their little cast- 
aways. 

Everybody in New York goes in for athletics 
of some kind. You must be very careful how 
you speak to the most spindle-shanked fop or 
the most hollow-chested bookkeeper, for ten 
to one he takes his exercise in the morning be- 
fore the open window and his muscles are like 
wire rope. 

It is a very athletic town, is New York. 



Summer in IRew )?orh 



299 




fflkrt^SS^Sl'^wi' 



On the coldest evenings of 
early spring you will see 
teams of boys and young 
men out for a 'cross- 
country, or rather 'cross- ^^^ 
city, run. It is very start- ^^"^ 
ling to see a covey of these ^^ 
striplings go by — striplings 
is the word, for a short-sleeved undershirt and 
a pair of short rowing breeches are all tliey 
wear, except for shoes and short socks. It is 
quite Grecian to see these bare-armed, bare- 
chested, bare-legged athletes go darting across 
street-car tracks and through the crowds dressed 
for dinner or theatre. 

With the spring the hunt clubs in West- 
chester County and on Long Island and nearby 
New Jersey go out and fill the country with 
packs of beagles and foxhounds and thorough- 
breds ridden by thoroughbreds in red coats and 
hunting caps. 

Those who can afford polo risk their lives and 
limbs in the polo grounds nearby; in the winter 
they play at such places as the armory of 
Squadron A. In the spring all the boathouses 

on the Harlem River pour forth 
their half-naked athletes row- 
ing their toothpick shells. And 
a hundred yacht clubs put out 
every form of craft, from the 
smallest cat to the ocean-going 




300 Zhc IRcal nm )l>ork 

steam yacht, not to mention the naphtha 
launches, the automobile launches and the 
world-beating sloops which have kept the 
America s Cup here ever since it was captured 
by the old Avierica. The contests for that 
cup have been among the most brilliant of 
national outdoor events, and the whole city 
crowds into big excursion boats and adjourns 
to Sandy Hook on the days of these races. 

We have borrowed cricket, lacrosse, tennis and 
squash from England, and these games are much 
played here, though we have not yet been able 
to equal the foreign champions in most of them. 
In all the other athletic events, however, includ- 
ing boxing, track athletics, weight putting and 
tests of strength, we hold pretty nearly all the 
world's championships. Then we have our own 
national game of baseball, which is to cricket 
what whisky is to cambric tea. Even the Eng- 
lish crowds at Lord's in London sit languidly 
through the game of cricket, with an occasional 
little spatter of applause and a gentle murmur 
of ''Well bowled, old chap!" Compare this with 
the fiendish excitement of the mobs that watch 
the great baseball games and grow so frenzied 
over the complex and graceful contest that they 
call for the umpire's life when he decides some 
doubtful crisis against the home team. Besides 
the two professional leagues — with their high- 
salaried players whose names are household 
words and whose records are watched like quo- 



Sumincr in Bcw ll)orh 301 

tations of the stock market — there are the teams 
of all ages and professions, who meet wherever 
there is space enough to spread a diamond. Then 
there are the fencing clubs for men and women 
and the numberless bowling alleys, the number- 
less billiard-rooms, the gymnasiums for men and 
women and children all about town; the pools, 
with swimming contests, and the thrilling sub- 
marine battles of water polo, and the basket- 
ball teams and the shooting galleries. 

In the fall comes football, and the whole town 
puts on college colors, carries college flags and 
lacerates its throat with college yells. The foot- 
ball fields are black with crowds; sometimes 
40,000 to 50,000 are gathered round one grid- 
iron, where rival giants agonize like teams of 
angry bufl^alo. Football lasts till snow flies, and 
the ice rinks open with their artificial lakes and 
their hockey teams cracking each other's shins 
in high glee. On the rare days when it turns 
cold enough for ice to form in the Park lakes 
the red ball is put up to spread the glad tidings, 
''Skating to-day," and thousands of men and 
women sally forth steel-shod and glide or bump 
till the last electric light is turned off at mid- 
night. 

Golf, of course, rages all the year round, like 
automobiling. In the number and speed of our 
automobiles we are still second to Paris, but far 
ahead of London. 

But the prettiest sight of all is the coaching, 



302 z\)c IReal IRcw HJorh 

and there are various tally-hos that make daily 
trips to distant points. "The Pioneer" drives 
from the Holland House to Ardsley, twenty-five 
miles away, leaving at 10.30, lunching at Ards- 
ley, and making the home run between 3.30 
and 6. For relays it has teams of four. The 
coaches return usually about twilight, and there 
is a touch of poetry in the scene when the pat- 
tering hoofs come in through the gloaming 
and the tarantara of the long horn echoes down 
the crowded Avenue. 

For many years the Coaching Club has had 
an annual spring meet. This year eighteen drags 
were in line, led by the same aristocratic whip 
who has conducted their triumphant chariots for 
twenty-two years. 

Round and round the town also go the " See- 
ing New York " automobile coaches, packed 
with tourists, who are shown all the sights 
under the guidance of a lecturer with a mega- 
phone. Many New Yorkers, too, join these 
parties, and learn with amazement what store 
of interest has been gathering here unbeknownst 
while they were gadding Europe. 

Then there are the races on various tracks 
within easy reach by train, such places as Graves- 
end, Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay, Jamaica, 
Aqueduct and Morris Park. These events draw 
daily crowds of thousands, especially the races 
with large purses and the more noted horses. 
Among the chief events of the year are the races 



Summer in IRcw ipork 



303 




THE TIPSTER 



known to fame as the 
INIetropolitan, the To- 
boggan, the Withers, the 
Brooklyn Handicap, the 
Suburban and the Fu- 
turity. At these races 
crowds of 40,000 or 
50,000 assemble. They 
make a beautiful array, 
packing the great grand- 
stands, blackening the 
lawns and crowding the 
graceful clubhouses, the 
clusters of tally-hos and 
the hundred or more 

gaily colored automobiles. But there is little 
thought of beauty, except for the thrilling beauty 
of equine perfection at its utmost endeavor. 
Messengers hurry to and fro among the women 
collecting bets, and the betting ring is one mad 
swarm of jostling, reaching and clutching 
gamesters, fighting to force their money on the 
willing layers of odds. 

It is all over in a minute or two. The confu- 
sion and impatience of the start, the hopes that 
are left at the post, the hailstorm of hoofs dying 
away in the distance, the silent shuffling in the 
pack far away from the hysterical crowd, the 
sifting out of the two or three who are to share 
the glory, the sudden rounding into the home- 
stretch, the growth of the pigmies to life size, 



304 Zhc IRcal 1Rcw lJ)ork 

the frenzied rush for the wire, the flash past, the 
explosion of silence into hurricane — it is a short 
drunkenness, but intense and fiery. And then 
the reaction — the effort of those who have won 
to repress their bubbling exultation, the effort 
of the majority to look like good losers, the ran- 
sacking of pockets for overlooked change as 
a rescue from a long walk home, the resolution 
never to play the races again, the reappearance 
at the next event — it is the indelible insanity, and 
existed when those old apartment-house sports, 
the cliff dwellers, bet their axe-heads on the speed 
of their three- toed horses. 

So, taking all in all, no one can complain of 
the dulness of New York summers excepting 
him who is spoiled by the Saint Vitus dance of 
the winters. To the hordes of invaders from 
out of town New York is an ideal summer re- 
sort. To the discontented there are easy ave- 
nues of escape to the mountains, the hills, the 
river, the Sound, the sea. In fact, some of the 
best things in New York are just outside. 

The exit through the tunnels which are build- 
ing or built means a short suffocation that is 
very trying after the usual dash for the train. 
But from the Grand Central Station one quickly 
reaches the hills and vales and the pleasant coun- 
try places of Westchester County, with its golf, 
its country clubs, its rural life de luxe. East- 
ward is Long Island, which is studded with all 
manner of resorts, from the plebeian Coney 




^t 



\)\J 



^r 



AT THE RACES 



Sumincr in IHcw ll)orU 305 

Islaiul to Brighton or Rockaway, and with nu- 
merous home towns along the Sound or the 
ocean down to Montauk Point and Shelter 
Island. Manhattan Beach is most famous, with 
its two big hotels and their big prices. There 
is an outdoor theatre here, where Sousa's band 
or some comic opera troupe can always be heard. 
The huge piazzas of the hotel are crowded with 
dining tables, and every afternoon thousands of 
business men roll down their desks and flit to 
Manhattan Beach for a dip in the surf, a dinner 
on the piazza and a stroll in the gardens and 
the soothing concourse of sweet sounds. 

To the west are the inland towns of New 
Jersey, famous, not without cause, for her mos- 
quitos — the only serious drawback to what were 
else a convenient paradise. Englewood, the Or- 
anges, Lakewood, with her pines; Lake Hopat- 
cong, more beautiful than its name; Summit, 
Nutley, Bound Brook, Montclair, the Hacken- 
sack Valley, Morristown and many another com- 
fortable resting place are here. Then there is 
Staten Island to the south, and further south, 
stretching away toward Florida, lies the long, 
long beach of the Jersey coast, to be reached by 
railroad, or, far better, by an hour's cruise down 
the majestic Bay on racehorse steamers. 

First is Sandy Hook, with its military estab- 
lishment and its proving ground for great guns. 
The Government, however, and its soldiers mo- 
nopolize this long reef; but nearby are the 
20 



306 



^be IRcal IRew l^orft 



Atlantic and Navesink Highlands and the hills 
bordering on the Shrewsbury River, where many 
of moderate income pitch their tents. Then be- 
gins the long chain of golden beads — cities that 
lie dormant in winter, but in summer are hum- 
ming with life. Every train is met by scores of 
young men and maids bareheaded and brown. 
Each town has its own tribe and individuality; 
its cottagers scorn the hotel mobs and the hotel 
mobs scorn the cottagers. The train runs league 
after league through one long lawn, one almost 
unbroken series of cottages, many of them pala- 
tial in structure and environment. Elberon, 
Seabright, West End, and then Long Branch 
with its array of Hebrew wealth. At Asbury 
Park and Ocean Grove are multitudes of Metho- 
dist, Baptist and other ardent religionists gath- 
ering for ostentatious prayer and praise, yet not 
forgetting the delights of mixed bathing or the 
ancient rites of the moonlit beach; and so on 
down the coast, to the more exclusive Deal and 
Allenhurst, and yet further, even, on to far but 
well-named Point Pleasant. 

All things considered, there is certainly no 
other capital in the world with such a variety or 
splendor of refuges from city turmoil, within 
such easy reach. 



Chapter XVII 



AT CONEY BY THE SEA THE MOST ELABORATE PLEASURE 

RESORT IN THE WORLD — THE OLD CONEY ITS TWO 

GOOD POINTS THE NEW CONEY LUNA PARK AND ITS 

WONDERS THE DURBAR — DREAMLAND AND ITS BALL- 
ROOM OVER THE OCEAN THE DESTRUCTION OF NEW 

YORK 



THERE is not now and never has been in 
the world or its history a pleasure resort 
approaching Coney Island in the elaborateness 
or ingenuity of its devices to wheedle away 
dimes and despondency. 

The name of Coney Island had been for years 
a byword of plebeiance at its worst. Side- 
shows in wooden shacks, peanuts and popcorn, 
rag-throated barkers, hot babies spilling out 
of tired arms, petty swindles, puerile diversions, 
a wooden elephant, a Ferris Wheel, an observa- 
tion tower, hot sands, squalling children, bathers 
indecently fat or inhumanly lean shrieking in a 
crowded and dirty ocean, sweaty citizens, pick- 
pockets picking empty pockets, lung-testers, noi- 
some bicyclists, merry-go-rounds, weight-pound- 
ing machines, punching machines, ''one-baby- 
down-one-cigar!"— ring throwing at ugly canes, 
ball throwing at coons, "guess-your- weight!" — 



308 z\K IRcal IRcw l^orh 

tintype tents, dusty clam chowder served by 
toughs in maculate aprons, reliques of old pic- 
nics, a captive balloon, squalling babies covered 
with prickly heat, drooling sots and boozy women 
with their hair in strings, a boardwalk fetid with 
sweaty citizens, museums with snake-charmers 
who could charm nothing else, pretzels, fly- 
haunted pyramids of mucilaginous pies, shrieking 
babies with pins sticking in them, spanked by 
weary mothers and sworn at by jaded fathers, 
lemonade where overfed flies commit suicide, 
only to be disinterred by unmanicured thumbs, 
nigrescent bananas, heel-marked orange peel- 
ings, fractured chicken bones, shooting galler- 
ies snapping and banging and smelly of powder, 
saloons odious with old beer slops and inebriates, 
umbrellas on the sand where gat-toothed bicy- 
clists grin at fat beauties of enormous hip, little 
girls and boys with bony legs all hives and 
scratches paddling in the surf-lather with drip- 
ping drawers and fife-like shrieks, gaily bedight 
nymphs proud of their shapes and dawdling about 
in wet bathing suits that keep no secrets, poor 
little mewling babies that really need to go 
home, dance halls where flat-headed youths and 
women with plackets agape spiel slowly in a 
death-clutch, German bands whose music sounds 
like horses with the heaves, the steeplechase, 
where men and women straddle the same hobby- 
horse and slide yelling down the ringing grooves 
of small change, rancid sandwiches, sticky 



at (Zo\\c>? b^ the Sea 



800 



candies made of adulterated sweets and dye, 
more clam chowder, banging, bumping cars on 
creaking trestles filled with yowling couples, 
tangle-faced babies howling toward apoplexy, 
dusty shoes, obsolete linen, draggle skirts, sweat, 
fatigue, felicity — that is the Coney Island of 
long memory. 

There were just two 
things about it that 
were worth 
while: first was 
the sense of de- 
light it gave you 

to get back to 

N e w 

York; 

second, 

the shoot-the- 

chutes, where one 

felt the rapture of a seagull swooping to the 

waves — the long, swift glide down the wet incline, 

and the glorious splash into the flying spray! — 

who would not rather be a gondolier on one of 

those flat boats than Admiral Makaroff ? or the 

last flying machinist who spattered to the 

ground ? 

But these were the two exceptions that proved 
Coney Island to be a nightmare of side-shows in 
wooden shacks, peanuts and popcorn, rag- 
throated barkers, hot babies spilling out of tired 
arms — da capo al fine. 




THE 
STEEPLECHASE 



no ^he IReal IHcw l^ork 

To-day, though! The paltry Aladdin has 
rubbed his lamp. Palaces have leapt aloft with 
gleaming minarets, lagoons are spread beneath 
arches of delight, the spoils of the world's revels 
are spilled along the beach, rendering dull and 
petty the stately pleasure dome that Kubla 
Khan decreed in Xanadu. 

One night in the winter there was a fire — a 
suspicious fire — for how could a fire be both 
accidental and benevolent ? But, anyway, in 
one crimson night, the blood-red waves saw 
the plague spot cremated, all the evils and ugli- 
ness cleansed as on a pyre. The next morning 
the sun with smiling eye beheld acres of embers, 
charred timbers, ashes. Coney fuit! 

Then armies of carpenters and masons, en- 
gineers, electricians and decorators invaded 
Gomorrah. And this year's May found the 
old Coney Island metamorphosed, base metals 
transmuted into gold — or at least into gilt. Here 
is alchemy! here the palpable stone of philoso- 
phy! Henceforward London's Earl's Court 
is a churl's back-yard, the fetes of Versailles are 
nursery games, the Mardi gras of New Orleans, 
the Veiled Prophet of St. Louis, the carnivals of 
Venice are sawdust and wax ; as for the rare and 
amazing Durbar of India — that is an everyday 
affair here. 

Still, on the outskirts the old side-shows persist 
like parasites, and those who enjoy nothing till 
it is ancient history need not bewail the old 



at Conep b\) tbc Sea 3ii 

Coney Island. It is simply shoved to one side. 
In its old abode there is super-regal splendor. 
Last year's Luna Park finds this year a rival, 
Dreamland, and the two have exhausted the 
achievements of past and the ingenuities of 
present device as completely as their passionate 
press agents have squeezed dry the dictionary of 
flattering epithet. There is no adjective left that 
does not smell of advertisement. So nouns and 
numerals must coldly foreshow what now exists 
to inflate the mind and deflate the purse. 

Luna Park has waxed to the harvest fulness. 
It claims to be greater than the St. Louis Fair, 
illuminated beyond any spot on earth; it has 
reproduced the Court of Honor of the Buffalo 
Pan-American Exposition. 

It covers forty acres, twenty-four of them 
imder shelter. Its broad sheet of water is not 
only swept by gondolas and punts, but it is over- 
topped by a three-ring circus suspended over 
the waves. Here in full view of thousands, in 
tiers of boxes and promenades, the spotted 
horses, the clowns, the acrobats, jugglers, hoop 
artists, intellectual elephants, Arabian pyramid- 
ists, tumblers, contortionists disport under the 
crackling lashes of the ringmaster, with his 
long-tailed coat and his ''Hoop-la!" From sky- 
ish towers wires hang, and hereon trapezists and 
men and women of remarkable equilibrium 
do the impossible a hundred and thirty feet 
above the waters that serve for a net. This 



312 Zhc IRcal IRcw l^orh 

circus employs the most famous athletes, yet is 
free to all who enter the grounds. 

A Japanese tea garden, built by imported 
Japanese architects and wood-carvers and flor- 
ists, is rival to Yeddo. In the flower gardens 
thousands of tinted electric bulbs are hidden, to 
turn the night into noon. Babylonian gardens 
hang over all. 

Two high towers with suspended baskets 
will whirl the most phlegmatic giddy with cen- 
trifugal thrills. In the Helter-Skelter you may 
sit down on a polished and winding slide and 
renew the delights of banister days. The 
famous Trip to the Moon, with its convincing 
illusions, is still here, and you may go also, or 
think you go, 20,000 leagues under the sea. 
Infant incubators, a scenic railway, a midnight 
express, a German village, an old mill, the sea 
on land, a monster dance hall, a laughing show, 
a shoot-the-chutes are mere details. 

You will see battleships, torpedo boats, sub- 
marines and mines all combined in mimic war. 
One of the most elaborate dramas of realism 
is a whole city block crowded with people en- 
gaged in all the business and humor of town. 
Suddenly a building takes fire, a policeman rings 
the alarm, three fire engines, three hose carts 
and cordons of police appear. The whole block 
burns furiously in spite of the streams from the 
hose of a whole division. Fifty persons are 
rescued from the windows by ladders or blankets : 



at Conc^ bv> tbc Sea 



313 




AN OLD 

CONEY 

ISLANDER 



as the last woman Is saved the 
walls collapse. A thousand actors 
perform this big phiy. 

The climax of beauty is a repro- 
duction of the Durbar of India. 
Ancient Delhi is shown to the life, 
including an Indian sawmill with 
elephants at work or diving from 
heights into deep pools. The Dur- 
bar itself employs the largest herd 
of elephants in the world, sixty-seven in all, com- 
manded bv native mahouts, and decorated as 
nearly as possible in reproduction of the actual 
Hindu festival. 

The rival paradise. Dreamland, is said to have 
cost over $3,000,000. It has taken over the old 
Iron Pier and built above it the largest ball- 
room ever made, 20,000 square feet; beneath is 
the restaurant and a promenade, and beneath 
all the cool rush of the surf. The company runs 
four large steamers, as well as Santos-Dumont's 
Airship No. 9. 

In Dreamland you find a street called "the 
Bowery with the lid off," the spectacular Fall 
of Pompeii, a haunted house, a reproduction of 
the Doge's Palace, a complete midget village 
inhabited by three hundred Liliputians, a minia- 
ture railway, a double shoot-the-chutes, a coast- 
ing trip through Switzerland, a leapfrog rail- 
way, a camp and battle scene, a baby incubator 
plant, Bostock's Animal Show, the highest of ob- 



314 



Z\)c IRcal IHcw l?oik 



servation towers, a funny-room from Paris called 
'*C"^5^-a-nr^," and, finally, the Chilkoot Pass, a 
great bagatelle board, where the sliders win a 
prize if they can steer themselves into certain 
crevasses in the glaciers. Besides there is a 
great fire-fighting scene, not to mention a 
theatre where the best known vaudevillians hold 
sway, and innumerable music. 

But Luna Park and Dreamland are not the 
only spectacles of Pantagruelian proportions. 
There are others that have cost a hundred thou- 
sand dollars or more, such as the Johnstown 
Flood, in vivid reproduction, and the trip to the 
North Pole by way of a completely equipped 
submarine, with an amazingly ingenious illusion 
of the sea floor and the Arctic realm. There is 
also a huge theatre where a mimic New York 
is bombarded and destroyed by hostile fleets 
after a furious battle with the crumbling forts. 




Chapter XVIII 

LET US GO A-SLUMMING NEW YORK's SLUMS AND THOSE 

OF OTHER CITIES — DRUNKENNESS IN VARIOUS CAPITALS 

SORROWS OF RICH AND POOR AMELIORATION THE 

CRIME OF AIDING BEGGARS — THE OLD HAUNTS OF VICE 

TEACHING CHILDREN TO PLAY THE MORGUE THE 

CITY HOSPITALS AND PRISONS THE BOWERY OF OLD 

AND NOW BAXTER STREET THE GHETTO THE MOST 

DENSELY POPULATED SPOT IN THE WORLD THE FISH 

MARKET THE SWEAT-SHOP THE LUNG BLOCK — A CON- 
TRAST — THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE ON A GALA 
NIGHT 

TO the much-traveled Ulysses who has gone 
through the Infernos of poverty in Lon- 
don, Naples, Constantinople, Cairo and India 
the miseries of the New York poor will prove a 
deep disappointment, for few things are so dis- 
appointing as to find a mediocre comfort where 
one had expected a lurid agony. Drunkenness 
is far more frequent in New York than it should 
be, heaven knows, and the sight of intoxicated 
women is by no means uncommon, especially 
at midnight. But in this respect it is infinitely 
superior to London, where besotted females — 
they can no longer be called women — fill the 
''publics" and lie innumerably in gutters and 
on doorsteps all about the great city, till it seems 
that it must have rained scarecrows. London- 



3ifi Zbc IRcal IHcw l?orh 

ers are deeply hurt when Americans complain 
of the ghastly inebriation and the constant fight- 
ing of withered Bacchantes. The virtuously 
Episcopal London prides itself on being far su- 
perior to other British cities, especially to good 
old Presbyterian Glasgow, where, in the ''Cow 
Gate," one must at night pick his way with care 
to avoid walking on those who have fallen in 
the battle with Gambrinus. It is only in the 
heathendom of Paris and the beer-swimming 
Berlin that public drunkenness is rare. 

The poor of New York are far cleaner of ap- 
pearance and far neater of costume, as a rule, 
than the British poor; though, for this, the lack 
of soft coal and mud is perhaps more to credit 
with than the taking of the morning tub. 

In fact, compared with many cities, there is 
no poverty in New York and there are no slums. 
And yet, compared with what the lover of his 
kind would wish for others and would hate to 
lack for himself, there is bitter wretchedness in 
our slums, and thousands find only dregs in their 
cup of life. 

He who gives his charity to the chance beggar 
on the street gives it to one who is in almost 
every instance a common thief, stealing from 
those who need and deserve. 

There are few beggars in New York com- 
pared with Italy and Spain, or almost any Euro- 
pean country, but their number is still legion, and 
they are full of ingenuity. The woman who has 



Xct IDiei 60 H^Sluininiiio ^i7 

lost her carfare; the bedraggled mother witli the 
infant in her arms; the pathetic blind man; the 
hoarse-voiced workingman out of a job; the 
elegantly dressed gentleman with the Southern 
accent whose remittance from Richmond is em- 
barrassingly delayed; the epileptic who, in his 
own technical language, ''chucks a dummy fit"; 
the famous crumb-thrower who darts into the 
gutter for a crumb of bread which he has care- 
fully thrown there and now absent-mindedly 
devours as if unconscious of being observed; the 
young man who is stranded and wants a dime 
for a bed or a little money to pay his fare back 
home — these and many others who prey upon the 
shallow sympathy of weak men and women 
should be left unheeded or turned over to the 
police. 

Tell them that there is a charity association 
on Twenty-second Street with competent facili- 
ties for any actual need and note the answer of 
scorn that you receive. Offer to take one of 
them who is starving to a restaurant and try to 
make him eat as a starving man would and see 
what happens. But if you have any self-re- 
spect or any real heart for the genuinely honest 
victims of ill-luck, give your money wisely to 
those whose business it is to hunt out and pro- 
tect the honorable poor. Those who drop their 
clanging pennies into the tin can of the profes- 
sional beggar, and give with proud thoughts of 
decent act, are only accessories in crime, and 



318 



Zbc IRcal mew l?orft 



their tenderness is that of the mother who gives 
her child a box of matches because it asks for 
them. 

In a word, the charities of New York, in spite 
of all their human imperfections, have been so 
completely organized that you need never ques- 
tion this statement: Everyone who begs is a 
professional beggar, no matter what the story 
or how plausible the appearance. 

It would be far more picturesque 
and dramatic to draw a picture of 
the New York slums in colors bor- 
rowed from a stormy sunset, with 
black clouds of poverty banked up 
in mountains, shot through with 
red streaks of crime, with the light- 
ning flashes of murder, and with 
the thunder of ferocious strife for 
existence; but the effort of this 
chapter is toward reality, and 
reality seen in some perspective 
and proportion. 

But let us to the slums to see how the slum- 
sters live and how the slums amuse themselves. 
Of all the people who have come to New" 
York for some years, the Rev. Mr. Granger, of 
Terre Haute, had the greatest expectations of 
finding unmitigated vice in the high places and 
immitigable wretchedness in the low. Peter 
Simes, however, having constituted himself a 
committee of one on conspiracy, had proceeded 




A NEW YORKER 



Xct Tri6 60 a^Slummlnc; 319 

in cold blood to rob Terre Haute of the most 
stirring scenes from Sheol that were ever 
launched from a pulpit. 

"There are three famous places 1 have al- 
ways heard of and must not fail to see," said 
Mr. Granger. "They are the most notorious 
haunts of vice in New York, and while my 
series of sermons has dwindled down to one or 
tw^o, 1 must tell my parishioners of the festering 
wickedness of these places: Five Points, Mul- 
berry Bend and Corlear's Hook. Will you take 
me there .^" 

"Suttainly, suh!" exclaimed the Southern 
poet, with unwonted joy. 

Five Points — so named because several streets 
so cross as to leave five small and irregular blocks 
— is only a few steps north of City Hall, and 
once had a beautiful reputation. The word 
tenement did not then mean that large and 
sanitary and fire-escape-full hotel which the 
law now means by tenement, but a foul rookery 
of melodramatic charms. In its day of glory 
Five Points was full of grogshops and dens of 
iniquity. The Five Pointers killed a policeman 
every few months, and the station nearby w^as 
called the "Bloodv Sixth." But a ruthless 
Board of Health with no regard for the feelings 
of novelists or the ennui of tourists closed up 
such sweet crannies as Donovan's Lane and 
Cow Bay, and gave the name of Worth to An- 
thony Street — where the saint would have been 



320 ZY)c IRcal mcvv IPorft 

violently invited but not seriously tempted by 
the nymphs of the region. 

The Rev. Mr. Granger, to his unutterable 
regret, found Five Points a clean and prosaic 
group of solid buildings all devoted to business, 
except the Five Points House of Industry and 
the Five Points Mission. At the Mission the 
"Shoe Club" was making its weekly distribu- 
tion of free footwear to poor children. 

''This wonderful change pleases me beyond 
words," said the Rev. Mr. Granger, and he 
could hardly keep back his tears. " Let us take 
a glance now at that swamp of wickedness, Mul- 
berry Bend." 

Simes, with a malicious gleam in his eye, 
played Virgil to the zealous Dante and led him 
a short distance to the right to Mulberry Bend. 
Here was a broad park filled with children, 
playing, romping and laughing, while the 
mothers rested their weary bones on the benches 
and watched their offspring dabbling in the 
fountain or flying through the air on the swings. 
Nearby was a big schoolhouse. 

"This is Mulberry Bend as it is, suh," said 
Simes. "In other parts of the town there are 
other parks like this, where the poor may come 
to breathe and the children to be children. 
They are called the lungs of New York. Some 
people object, because there is not mo' grass in 
these places, and because they are not filled with 
* God's beautiful flowers.' But grass weahs out 




CONEY ISLAND 



Xct TIl6 (Bo H^Sluminino 32i 

like a boy's breeches, siih, and these children 
infinitely prefeh the outdo' gymnasiums, the 
cindeh tracks and the smooth places where 
they can play their games and run wild." 

There are other parks with more elaborate 
gymnasiums than this, such as the Seward Park, 
the Hamilton Fish Park and the Tompkins 
Square Park. At night, in the summer, there 
are band concerts here as well as .on the many 
Recreation Piers, where the poor can enjoy the 
luxury the rich feel when they sit out on balconies 
overlooking the moonlit waters. The most 
pathetic thing about these children's play- 
grounds is the fact that when they were first 
opened the poor little wretches stood about, not 
knowing what to do. They had been used to 
the hot streets and the dingy tenements, and 
they were deeply ignorant of the games that 
normal childhood knows. The little girls had 
learned to play housekeeping and funerals— 
they knew enough of these — but the boys knew 
little except street arab wickedness and the 
fighting of gang against gang. It was high time 
to open these parks. There is surely no more 
beautiful form of education than teaching chil- 
dren to romp. 

But probably the sight of so much comfort 
and recreation never caused so much despond- 
ency in a human heart before. In a failing tone 
the minister said : 

''Take me, then, to Corlear's Hook, where the 
21 



322 Hhc IReal 1Rcw l^oih 

marble yards are, and where, as I used to read, 
the criminals, after having committed their fel- 
onies or their murders, take refuge in the wil- 
derness of the stone yards and the policemen 
do not dare to go alone or even in couples." 

Simes led the way across to the old Belt Line 
of horse cars that still swings round the circle, 
and they bounced along near the river, with its 

forest of masts and its caravans of sailing ves- 

• ^-^ 

sels moored to the slips. They eventually ar- 
rived at a large sweep of green with graceful 
pavilions and playgrounds fronting the river. 

"This is Corlear's Hook," said Simes. The 
Rev. Mr. Granger dropped limply upon a bench 
and found no cheer in the thronging commerce 
that swept down the river, nor even in the view 
of the governmental Navy Yard across the 
stream. Here, in a deep indentation on the 
Brooklyn Shore, known as Wallabout Bay, the 
old prison-ship Jersey was once moored, and 
here, where our ancestors rotted and starved, 
to-day our warships come glorious home from 
the ends of the oceans. From the Park they 
could see the old frigate Vermont and the huge 
drydocks, with their swinging cranes that pluck 
up a twelve-inch gun like a lead pencil. 

But the minister was interested in none of 
these things. Nothing would cheer him but mis- 
ery, and he longed to see crime. So Simes de- 
cided to take him to Blackwell's Island by ferry. 
He stopped to obtain a pass from the Depart- 



Xct 1116 60 a^Sluinmino 323 

ment of Charities at the famous Belle vue Hos- 
pital at the foot of East Twenty-sixth Street. 
The pass was given without liesitation. Before 
taking the ferry they paused at the Morgue, 
where those who enjoy that sort of spectacle, or 
those whom awful necessity brings there in 
search of the lost, may find the unidentified and 
the unclaimed dead lying in chill nakedness on 
the marble slabs under the drip-drip-drip of icy 
water. How they stare through the glass, ap- 
pealing for decent burial! 

Then Simes and Granger took ferry to Black- 
well's. On this long, slim strip of land, known 
simply as "the Island" to all criminals, stands 
not only the great prison, but also an almshouse, 
a workhouse, various asylums and hospitals and 
especially a great charity hospital. There is 
strict discipline here. The routine is occasion- 
ally interrupted by a mad dash of some prisoner 
to escape and swim ashore; but the patrol 
boats get him if he doesn't drown in the swift 
tide that comes flashing down from Hell Gate. 
Still further north are Ward's and Randall's 
Islands, which the city has taken for its own 
and on which it has built a magnificent system 
of palaces for the care of those who are afflicted 
with any of the chronic diseases of insanity, pov- 
erty or what we call crime. 

This inspection was so long and interesting 
a tour that the minister reached his boarding- 
house at a late liour and in great fatigue. He 



324 Zhc IRcal IRcw l^orft 

had seen much crime and much misery, but 
they were both housed in all possible comfort, 
where they would do the least harm and be done 
the most good. 

That same morning De Peyster had started 
forth to show Myrtle what he knew of the slums. 
They took the Madison Avenue car and it car- 
ried them through Union Square, which was once, 
like Washington, Madison and Bryant Squares, a 
dismal Potter's Field, from which even the dead 
were gradually evicted by the restless northward 
growth. The beauty of these green gardens, 
where the jaded can rest and the children scam- 
per, is a type of the evolution of all the black 
spots of New York. 

The car went on its way, passing Cooper 
Union, the meeting-house and reading-room of 
the poor. In front of it stands Saint-Gaudens's 
bronze statue of the homely old philanthropist 
who founded it. As they passed De Peyster said : 

"Now we are in the Bowery." 

"Why, it's still the same street." 

"Yes, but it has changed its name to Bowery 
or, rather, this place still keeps its old Dutch 
name when it was the lane between the Bou- 
weries; that is, the farms." 

"But it looks so respectable, with all these 
business houses and fine shops and beautiful 
savings banks." 

"Yes, it is so changed from the old days that 
many of the business men want to give up the 



Xct lae (Bo a^-SlununiUij 



325 



ancient name. The day of the 'Dead Rabbit' 
gangs and the old man-eating 'Bowery 13'hoys' 
is gone forever. This is the Broadway of the 
East Side and the aristocracy of the slums come 
here to buy their carpenter's tools, their hats and 
clothes and shoes, to buy their diamonds, to revel 
in the auctions, to pawn their winter clothes in 
summer and their 
summer clothes in 
winter, or to see a rous- 
ing melodrama. On the 
Bowery you can get 
what they call a ' good 
regular meal ' for twen- 
ty-five cents; elsewhere 
they call it table d'hote 
and charge you fifty 
cents for less and 
worse. 

" But still the Bow ery 
is not quite dead, and it 
has so much individuality to the poorer classes 
that you cannot wonder at their homesickness 
for it when they are in other towns. The worst 
thing they can say of another town is ' This place 
is too far from the Bowery.' The Bowery is 
the street the sailors of all the navies of the 
world first make for when they make this port. 
It means all to them that a Paris boulevard 
means to the flaneur. For on the Bowery you 
can buy everything, from a toothpick to an 




ON BAXTER STREET 



326 Zhc IRcal mew IDorh 

anchor, and the whisky is the strongest and the 
glasses the longest in the world. The sailor can 
find a concert hall or a variety show always go- 
ing, and he can get his palm read, his forearm 
tattooed or his pocket picked with the greatest 
ease. It may amuse you to see one of these 
seedy Dime Museums where the poor are enter- 
tained." 

They left the car and went into the yawning 
entrance of a tall building plastered with an- 
nouncements of all the wonders of the world, 
from the smallest dwarf to the lady who outdoes 
Katisha and wears a mane between her shoulder- 
blades; from the man built like a horse to the 
horse that knows more than a man; from living 
pictures to prehistoric skeletons. 

De Peyster paid his money to a languid 
maiden in a booth and passed from the flare of 
posters to the dingy rooms where cheap curiosi- 
ties failed to evoke curiosity. On the next floor 
was the gallery of the freaks, and here blinking 
albinos, fat ladies who were not so very fat and 
living skeletons who were not so very thin ex- 
changed commonplace conversation with a short- 
skirted, fuzzy-headed, gum-chewing Circassian 
princess who offered photographs of herself with 
a drapery of pythons. The deadly ophidians lay 
dozing in a box nearby; they looked as danger- 
ous as so many sections of rubber hose. 

De Peyster was for buying everything to be 
bought and wore a mask of immense enthusiasm 



Xct iri6 (5o fl:^Slutninlnij ^27 

for everything. He engaged tlie freaks in con- 
versation and spent on them the courtesies he 
would have shown to a marchesa. llis reward 
was the final compliment of the princess, wlio 
said to him in purest Circassian: 

"Say, 1 don't wan' to give yuh no jolly, but 
usen't youse to be on the stage ? No ? 'Onesto- 
gawd! You act so much like a poyfec' gent 1 
thought youse must be a actor." 

At this moment the barker brought forward 
a poor wreck of congenital malformation, one of 
the infinite variety of twins that have come 
coupled into the world. Showing the object of 
pity as if it were an object of pride, he broke 
out, in a nasal sing-song : 

" Come, see this miracle of Gawd's handiwork. 
Is it not interesting as well as instructing ? I want 
you all to take a good look and then go home and 
tell your friends that you have seen Gawd's own 
handiwork for ten cents. Gawd's handiwork, 
ladies and gentlemen. Next I invite your atten- 
tion to the wonderful lady who eats glass." 

When the talented lady had performed, De 
Peyster said : 

"It's really wonderful how that woman di- 
gests all those candy bottles." 

The piano-mauler now began, and De Peys- 
ter barkened to the voice of another barker 
who recommended the great dramatic enter- 
tainment — "admission, only five cents, a nickel 
or half a dime! Come one, come all!" 



328 Zhc IRcal mew l^orh 

The dramatic entertainment was on the third 
floor, and it was deadly, save for the Uving 
pictures in which two or three ill-formed women 
took awkward poses in grotesque imitation of 
imaginary classic statuary. 

''The next group," said the barker, "will be 
especially fine. You have all doubtless been to 
college" — several alumni of the night school 
and business college sat up straighter — "and 
while there you have doubtless read the works 
of Homer, a poet much used in schools and 
colleges. The next group is from one of his 
beautiful poems, where he describes Aenius 
bidding farewell to Dado." 

De Peyster fled with Myrtle up another flight 
of stairs to the Wax Works Palace. Of all 
horrors wax works are the most horrific. The 
worst of them have a reality that is uncanny, and 
their glistening skins, raw colors and glassy 
eyes, empty clothes and stiff poses are annoying 
as a grotesque caricature that tells a bitter 
truth inescapably. But when you find them in 
an obsolete condition, with their wax melted, 
their eyes askew, their colors run, their clothes 
moth-eaten and their straw stuffing coming out; 
and when these wrecks are grouped to represent 
moral lessons, the deeds and the punishments of 
murderers, throat-cutters — De Peyster and Myr- 
tle fairly tumbled downstairs to get back to the 
air and real people. 

De Peyster insisted on stopping at a gallery 



Xct '\Iie (Bo a^SUunmino 



329 



to have their pliotographs taken on a button. 
The artist — on the Bowery everybody is an 
artist who handles anything daintier than a pick 
— the artist treated them as lovers, to De Peys- 
ter's joy and Myrtle's embarrassment. De 
Peyster examined with great enthusiasm the 
pictures of Bowery bridal couples: the groom 

always sits down and it is 
hard to say whether he is 
suffering more from his '' noo 
soot of hand-me-downs," his 
tight shoes or from the pho- 
tographer's fork, the tines of 
which are stuck in the back 
of his skull. 

De Peyster 
studied these 
bridal pho- 




IN LITTLE ITALY 



tographs with deep respect, and began to ask, 
"How much do you charge for these .^ Do 
you think you could make a good group of 

us two .?" 

But Myrtle had gone, and he had to run to 
catch her. He found her red as fire, but not 
altogether angry, so he turned off the Bowery 
now to Mulberry Street, the new Naples. The 



:^3o Zbc IRcal IRew l?orh 

day was warm, with a presage of summer. It 
was a day for opening windows and laying off 
overcoats. 

It was spring in Little Italy ! And the Neapol- 
itan soul came out to meet the incoming spring — 
herself an Italian immigrant with her sack full 
of Favonian breezes, for winter was gone, and it 
was spring's turn to play, as said that earlier 
Italian : 

" Solvitur acris hiems, grata vice veris et Favoni." 
Mulberry Street was all out of doors. Those 
who were not in the street or on the sidewalk 
were hanging from the windows and calling to 
one another from the fire-escapes. The push- 
carts were jammed and tangled everywhere, 
selling fresh tomatoes from Florida, which these 
good souls could ill afford yet could not deny 
themselves. In the windows of the shops were 
heaped up fruits from Sicily and Calabria, and 
ropes of Italian melons strung in garlands. 
Cheeses in bladders hung next to kegs of Italian 
wines and cans of oil from real olives. The 
graceful fiascJii gurgled of home to these exiles. 
And their costumes showed their patriotism. 
For they had not yet laid aside their heavy 
shawls and green capes. They had not for- 
gotten to sing in the streets. The women had 
not learned the use of hats nor the men of col- 
lars. In the saloons they lounged and exchanged 
jovial gossip that sounded to the stranger like 
the bloodthirsty threat of brigands, for the 



let m> Go fl^Shnnming -^'^^i 

Italian language, so mellow in the singing when 
the vowels are dwelt upon, is ragged with con- 
sonants in the speech; even the double consonants 
are ke})t distinct and not slurred like ours. 

Myrtle was regretting her failure to bring her 
sketching materials, for every sj)ot was a pic- 
ture, every group a composition. She was in 
raptures over the beauty of the black-haired, 
olive-toned women and the still greater beauty 
of the men. For all the unfitness of the cos- 
tume they affect, with the short and overtight 
corduroys, nothing could rob them of their great 
Latin eyes or of their frank vanities of pose and 
manner. Paupers though they are, they have 
something of the gallantry of the Decameronian 
gardens. 

*'Look at that Grecian nose," cried Myrtle, 
" and those Praxitelesian curls." 

"Their forefathers were Greek immigrants to 
Sicily and Naples, as they are colonists here," 
said De Peyster. 

He took her to one of those shops where the 
street pianos are made and rented and repaired. 
For a few dollars any new tune can be inserted 
on the great barrel-shaped pin-cushion. These 
clatterine: instruments are the lutes wherewith 
the modern Trovatori go about the city distribu- 
ting Mascagni's Intermezzo and the latest rag- 
time hysteria indiscriminately. In the poorer 
quarters these strolling musicians are royally 
welcomed. It is a poor woman indeed who 



332 z\)c IRcal mew l^orK 

cannot rest from her sewing long enough to 
revel in the pathos of "Those Cruel Words 
Should Not Be Spoken," and to wrap up a 
penny in a scrap of paper and throw it down 
in gratitude. And then the little knots of chil- 
dren dancing in the streets, cotillions in tatters, 
ragged dance - raptures of demoiselles of the 
gutter. 

As Myrtle and De Peyster left Mulberry 
Street, they paused to watch an Italian funeral. 
They learned that the dead man had kept a 
fruit-stand, and that he lived in a few rooms in 
a big tenement; but he was rich for Mulberry 
Street. He was a member of the Fratellanzo 
Calvellese (The Fraternity from the village of 
Calvello), and now a hundred of his brotherhood 
had left off work for a day to escort him to 
Calvary Cemetery in Brooklyn. Each of them 
was dressed in black and wore in his lapel a 
black ribbon with silver letters. The men 
marched in double file; at the head of one file 
the green, red and white flag of Italy wreathed in 
crape, and at the head of the other the Stars and 
Stripes of their new country. The procession 
was led by a brass band in brilliant uniform, the 
hearse was heaped with flowers and followed 
by a second band. Then came the double file 
of the brotherhood, and after that twenty closed 
carriages filled with w^omen and childen. Mass 
had been heard at the Church of Our Lady of 
Loretto. As they moved along with funeral 



Xet 'ine (5o H^Slummiiuj 333 

music, the foreigners lifted their hats till the 
hearse had passed. De Peyster did the same. 

From Mulberry Street De Peyster turned into 
Baxter Street, made famous, like the Bowery, by 
a song; for it was here that old *' Solomon Levi" 
lived. Here, in front of every clothing store, 
was a rabid puller-in who did not stop at pro- 
claiming his wares or inviting attention, but 
seized the passer-by and tried to drag him in. 
Even De Peyster was laid hold on and could 
only get loose by threats. Myrtle thought it was 
a great irony on his Brummellian elegance to be 
haled toward such hovels of cheap clothing till 
they crossed into Division Street, where women 
acted as pulleresses-in for cheap millinery shops, 
and where De Peyster had to rescue her almost 
by force from their clutches. 

"Do you hear that smell .^" he asked. "We 
have come from sunny Italy into Bessarabia, 
from the careless joy of Naples to the fierce 
money-hunger of the Ghetto, where you hear 
no songs and little laughter, and where the 
thought of beauty seems never to interest even 
the women. Where Hester Street crosses Di- 
vision Street there was, a few years ago, what 
was called the most densely populated spot on 
earth. In the big tenements three and four fam- 
ilies lived in one room, and thought it nothing 
unusual except when one of the families insisted 
upon taking in boarders. But they have put the 
William H. Seward Park there now, and it is 



334 



^be IRcal IRew) l^orh 



one big outdoor gymnasium where the children 
are learning the art of fun." 

The Ghetto is filled with the homeless race of 
the jealous God who forbade graven images and 
whose faithful people abjured sculpture and 
painting. The rich and the trav- 
eled of the nation have gone after 
the arts as well as the daughters 
of Moab, and in all the arts 
have shown a wonderfully 
high average of success. But 
the peasants reveal 
less of this than per- 
haps any other peas- 
ants of the civilized 
races. The men are 
not lazy, yet they 
carry industry to a 
criminal extent. 
Thrift becomes vicious; they 
grow wealthy without advan- 
taging themselves of the graces 
which wealth can buy and 
ought to buy. The men, with 
their treasures hoarded away, 
look like beggars and live like 
vermin. 

And the women have almost less sense of the 
beautiful than the men. They begin wrong at 
the start. When an orthodox Ghettess marries, 
instead of trying to remain beautiful for her hus- 




ON THOMPSON STREET 



Xct iBie (5o a^Sluintnino 335 

band's delight, she euts her hair short as a trib- 
ute to fideHty and thereafter wears a hideous, 
brown, ill-fitting wig — a schaitel — beneath which 
her own ugly poll shows ridiculously. The in- 
consistency is like that of the Egyptians who 
shaved their chins and stuck on a false beard, 
or that silly dignity of the English Bench which 
wears a powdered wig always a little too small. 
But the English wigs are white and clean and 
worn only by men; the Ghetto wigs are all brown, 
dirty, greasy, slipshod, odious — and they are 
worn by women. 

Heaven help the nation whose women cease 
to be foolishly anxious to seem beautiful! If 
there is anyone who disbelieves in corsets, let him 
go to the Ghetto. Better the tightest lacing and 
all the concealed derangements of internal af- 
fairs than the formlessness that comes of neg- 
lected waist lines. In the Ghetto the lean wo- 
men are slabsided and the fat are unspeakable. 
The young women are slatterns whose hair — 
soon to be snipped away— is heaped up in dis- 
order; their occasional unavoidable beauty of 
feature is neglected and is ruined as quickly as 
possible. The old women are hags and crones. 
Their soul life is no fairer than their bodily exist- 
ence. Laughter is rare, tender and amorous poet- 
ry of manner or speech is rare; beauty is a thing 
despised. All of us are greedy, but most of us are 
ashamed to be frank in the matter. In the Ghetto 
they make a pride of greed, an honor of haggling 



336 Zhc IReal IRew l^orh 

To a girl of Myrtle's beauty, her zest for clean- 
liness, her joy in beauty of line, color and mo- 
tion, the Ghetto was all a bad dream. The 
street was crowded with merchants; everybody 
was bent on selling or buying. The sidewalks 
were diked with pushcarts full of ugly stone 
china, fire-sale remnants of cloths, strings of gar- 
lic bulbs, rank vegetables, leaden knives, forks 
and spoons, shiny oilcloths, tinware, shoes — 
everything graceless, everything hideous. The 
little shops were heaped with wares remarkably 
uninviting; the cellar doors were bazaars of 
unpleasant utensils; old crones stood about 
with baskets of cheap calicos, ginghams and 
coarse laces. 

Buying and selling were not, as elsewhere, a 
mere affair of looking at a price mark and mak- 
ing up one's mind. The price asked was only 
meant as a declaration of war, the act of pur- 
chase was a battle of insult, the sale was a com- 
promise of mutual hatred. 

"Weiberle, weiberle," cries the merchant; 
"come by me and git good 'metsiah' (bargain)." 
The woman stops with a sneer, pokes contempt- 
uously at the merchandise, insults it and the 
salesman, underbids him half. He tries to prove 
that he would die of starvation if he yielded to 
her disgusting bid. She implies that he takes 
her for a fool. In a moment he is telling her 
that he hopes her children may strangle with 
cholera for trying to make a beggar of him. She 




AMATEUR NIGHT AT A BOWERY THEATRE 



Xct 'me 60 a:==SUimnunG 337 

answers that he is a thief, a Har, a dog of an 
apostate Jew. She makes as if to spit on his 
wares; he grabs them from her and throws them 
back on the heap. At length a sale is made and 
she moves on to the next bout. 

If there were in this any of the exultant rap- 
tures an Irishman feels in a battle, if it ended 
in a laugh, if it made in the least for happiness, 
it would be small matter. But it is as miserable 
as it is hideous. Life is not worth living. 

Judea in New York has many phases. It has 
its millionaires living in palatial homes; it has 
its masters of music, drama and all the arts; it 
has its gilded youth — someone called them the 
Jewnose doree; it has brilliant men and fascinating 
women who are welcomed with pride every- 
where; it has its lower middle class that takes 
life serenely and comfortably; its music-halls, 
its theatres, its decent fare. But in its lowest 
stages it furnishes New York with its most re- 
pulsive elements. The slums of the Yankees, 
the English, the Irish, the Italians, the Germans 
are at their worst more vicious, more shiftless, 
more helplessly and hopelessly bad than lowest 
Jewry. It is actually the higher average of in- 
telligence and energy that makes the Ghettites 
hardest to forgive. The others are lazy and 
worthless and ugly because they are the sifted 
chaff of their races. These might all be so much 
better and live so much more wisely and cheer- 
fully. 

99 



338 Zhc IRcal IRcw lOorh 

But they cling to the brawl and stench of the 
Ghetto, with its horrible streets and its more 
horrible tenements, so high and so crowded that 
in one square mile there are 250,000 souls — if 
souls they are. In rooms where the sun never 
reaches, and where the dust is never disturbed, 
men, women and children sleep, eat and perform 
all the necessary and unbeautiful functions of 
life. Shame is a different thing here from else- 
where ; self-respect and respect for others are ex- 
otics that perish soon. In these places are sweat- 
shops too numerous for the law to reach. It 
is not only in the shops and low-roofed lofts 
that they sew; the home also is a shop. 

The sewing machines whir all day and half 
the night, and the dancing needles stab the 
numb hearts into a brutish doggedness. Father, 
mother, the sons, the daughters and the little 
children turn and baste and work the button- 
holes and stitch and hem hour after hour, win- 
ter and summer, cold season or hot. In the 
corner, perhaps, squats an old, old man. His 
eyes are weak and his trembling fingers drive 
the needle often into his own flesh, but still he 
sews. He is racked with a consumptive's cough, 
but still he sews — sews the white plague into 
the fabric for the wretch who is to wear it. At 
night he sleeps with coats and trousers for 
coverlets. At early light he is sewing again; 
and the endless seam goes on, interrupted only 
by the spasms of coughing, coughing, coughing. 



Xct ine (Bo a^SIuininino 339 

At the sewing machine nearby, in the dark 
corner in the dim hght, sits one of his daugh- 
ters. She is of the age when spring stirs in the 
blood and the heart quickens with desire, when 
every w^oman is, or should be, a Juliet. But her 
heart is squeezed back in her bent and stunted 
breast. Her feet tread the dance of the eternal 
treadmill; her hands caress the rough cheviot 
of a cheap sweat-shop coat; her eyes follow the 
line of it as the seam runs forever under the 
eager needle. She hardly pauses to brush her 
neglected hair from her eyes; she cannot stop to 
sigh — and what should she sigh for ? No youth 
comes wooing her, no pretty speeches have ever 
tingled in her ears, no music has serenaded her 
save the twitter of the shuttle and the buzz of 
the wheel, the orchestra of the small room full 
of whirring machines. She knows nothing of 
joy; fatigue, pain, fever — these are life. She also 
coughs often and hard. Her old father's disease 
has caught her. She will not live to his age. 
In one thing at least she is blessed. 

But Myrtle knew nothing of this. She would 
not let De Peyster lead her into the dark, foul 
hallways of the tenements. The open air, the 
street scenes were more than she could bear. 

"Take me away from here," said Myrtle. 
**It's the ghastliest region I ever was in." 

*' There is one more spot you must see before 
we leave the slums. They're tearing down all 
the really beautiful horrors in New York, and in 



340 ^be IRcal IRcvv l?orft 

a few years the Ghetto will be clean and orderly, 
and there will be a park, doubtless, at this other 
place, too. But while it lasts it is a genuine 
horror." 

They walked southward through gloomy rows 
of tenement after tenement, till they reached the 
cluster of ramshackle structures bounded by 
Cherry, Catharine, Hamilton and Market 
Streets. This one block of six acres, which a 
farmer would count hardly big enough for a 
pasture, houses a city of more than 3,000 persons; 
on each acre there is an average of 478 men, 
women and children living a prairie-dog life. 

All of the tenements are full of the gloom and 
uncleanliness of overcrowded dens. The worst 
of them is called the Ink Pot; it has front and 
rear tenements and the rooms are plague spots 
where tenant after tenant has died of consump- 
tion. It holds 140 tenants, Irish and Italian 
poor, 23 of them infants. It contains twenty 
rooms without a window. It is the pestilent 
centre of a mass of hovels for which 265 cases 
of consumption in nine years have earned the 
lugubrious title of *'the Lung Block." 

The Lung Block, for all its squalor, has more 
than doubled in population in a few years. For 
all its poverty, it is surrounded by saloons whose 
dingy caves are splendid refuges to the victims 
of heredity imprisoned in the great donjon-keep. 
For all its misery, it is infested with vice, and 
the lowest of low women drive a gruesome trade 



Xct ^e i3o H^SIinnnuno 34i 

among the drunken and filthy voluptuaries. 
They are tlie very dust on the scum of a liell- 
brew. But the crusaders of health are fighting 
the existence of these ulcers, and they must one 
and all be eradicated in the great crusade. 

De Peyster offered to show Myrtle the inner 
miseries of these repellent exteriors, but she was 
sick of ugliness. She had devoted her life to 
the beautiful, and she fled from its opposite as 
from toads and slime. She was so depressed 
that De Peyster felt called upon to exorcise the 
evil spirits by some especial evocation of beauty. 
So he proposed an evening at the opera. 

When they separated each flew to the hottest 
of baths and the roughest of flesh-brushes. After 
dinner they met again, and he was immaculate 
in broadcloth and snowy linen, while she was a, 
princess in robes of trailing satin with shoulders 
and arms bare and beautiful. 

The opera was " Lucia di Lammermoor," and 
the despair of the plot was no hindrance to the 
serenity of the melodies; the lovers parted to 
catchy melodies, and the broken-hearted girl 
went mad to liquid cadenzas and fluty trills. 
The tenor was Caruso, of Italy, the soprano 
Sembrich, of Poland — two of the greatest vocal- 
ists that ever reveled in the perfections of 
tone. 

The architecture of the building had only its 
size to commend it, but the enormous horse- 
shoe of boxes and balconies was the brilliantest 



342 zbc IRcal mew l^orl^ 

sight in all the world, and the audience the most 
beautiful and most splendidly garbed. 

To please and to entice this big mob of oli- 
garchs, this polloi of aristocrats, the whole mu- 
sical world had been ransacked. The salaries 
paid are the highest ever known and the income 
from performances the largest ever achieved. 
At one performance the income has been $19,000; 
one series of eight brought in $100,000. With 
such funds there is small difficulty in kidnap- 
ping from the European capitals their Meister- 
singers. 

The audience is not alert for novelties, a na- 
tive American grand opera is unknown, and a 
singer without a European fame has no chance 
even to appear here for a verdict; and yet there 
are some compensations in the unrivaled bril- 
liance of the casts, and in the fact that 
Wagner's operas were a household word here 
while they were still unheard in many European 
cities. It was here that "Parsifal" was heard 
before it was heard anywhere else outside of 
Bayreuth. 

De Peyster led Myrtle, his sister and Calverly 
to the family box in the grand tier. The pro- 
gramme obligingly told the names of the occu- 
pants of these booths where fashion displays its 
diamonds, its ducats, its daughters and its dow- 
agers. Here were all the family names that had 
won a place on the golden scroll of fame which 
records the high caste of "among those present." 



Xct 'iri0 (5o fl^SUnnnuno ^^^ 

Calverly was delighted to see the American 
women in decollete. He confessed that the dis- 
play made in Covent Garden looked barnishly 
tame in comparison. In the double tier of boxes 
were grouped the proudest families of the 
nation; the women gowned and coiffed and 
bejeweled to the last reach of the cosmetic arts, 
the men furnishing a becoming background of 
black and white. 

Myrtle looked down on the long, broad sweep 
of the orchestra, with its checker of black-shoul- 
dered men and white-shouldered women, and its 
dew-sprinkle of diamonds and pearls in tiara, sun- 
burst, dog collar and necklace. She glanced at 
the Omnibus Box, with its hundred young bucks 
of fashion, most decoratively regular in their 
patches of black cloth and white linen. Then 
she raised her eyes to the top gallery, with its 
long, inclined plane of heads upon heads to the 
vanishing point, where the loftiest pigmies al- 
most touched the roof. It was a wonder-world 
to her, and the music of the huge orchestra took 
her into the cloudland of harmony. 

She had forgotten that this very moment a 
greater throng than this was scattered through 
fetid rooms, dimly lit and wretched. In this 
palace of violins, oboes, bassoons and mur- 
muring: horns she could hear no sound of that 
greater symphony, that unheroic symphony in 
monotonous minor played by the mighty orches- 
tra of sewing machines. 



344 zhc IRcal IRcw ll)orft 

She sat in her shallop overlooking the sea of 
wealth, and she breathed deep of the perfume 
of luxury, the stupendous paraphernalia and 
pomp of fashion seeking diversion at any 
cost. 

The fat and lumbering chorus women and the 
gawky men with their two gestures— one with 
the right hand and one with the left — reminded 
her of Little Italy, though these chorus people 
in their court garb looked far more plebeian 
than the loungers in the doorways of Mulberry 
Street. But there was little to ridicule and all to 
admire. Surely this was life, sitting in this seat 
of the mighty, among the princes of the land, 
and at her side the princeliest of all! 

And then, suddenly, in the midst of one of 
Sembrich's divinest roulades, there was a sharp 
hissing sound. It was strange, for American 
audiences do not hiss. The sound came from 
the balcony. She glanced that way, and a 
whole section of it was blotted out with smoke. 
The memory of the Chicago theatre horror was 
fresh in her mind. She seemed now to see the 
whole orchestra rise in terror; she could see the 
women, tangled in their long trains, packing the 
aisles solid, shrieking, pushing, tearing the silks 
from their bodies, trampling beauty and grace 
underfoot, smothering one another in mad 
stampede. 

She reached out impulsively and seized Ger- 
ald's arm. It was hard as marble and did not 



%ct 'me ©0 a^SluniiniuG 345 

tremble. lie looked at her in pale calm, and 
said : 

'' Don't be afraid, dear. We must show no ex- 
citement. It's the panic, not the fire, that kills." 

She clung to his hand and stared at the cloud 
of smoke. The people whom it veiled were 
plainly agitated, but they did not leave their 
places. Their heroism was sublime. If one 
woman began to scream and rush the whole 
house would go insane. Thousands had not no- 
ticed the disturbance, and Sembrich went on with 
her song while she watched the cloud of smoke. 

Then a fireman appeared and waved his hand 
to the people to be calm. When the New Yorker 
sees a fireman he feels safe; he knows that 
almost superhuman energy and courage are at 
hand. The smoke cleared slowly — it was only a 
fuse that had burned out in a group of lights, 
and soon the hearts fell back into the quiet 
rhythm, and music reigned supreme again. 

After the opera Gerald said : 

" They poke fun at society people, but breeding 
counts, and we are bred to take things quietly. 
They talk about getting back to good old nature 
and simplicity. Well, good old native sim- 
plicity would have set every man and woman 
there to screaming and fighting like mad to es- 
cape. Breeding said, 'Don't disgrace yourself; 
remember that a single indiscretion of yours 
may imperil the lives of others ; keep calm, what- 
ever you do.' That's what breeding does." 



346 



Z\K IRcal mew l^ork 



When Gerald took Myrtle home he said : 

"You showed true pluck to-night, Myrtle. I 
was proud of you." 

''I was terribly afraid till I held your hand." 

"Hold my hand again." 

"No; for now it is you that I am afraid of." 

"But let me explain." 

"To-morrow. Here's my hotel. Good-night. 
I like slumming in the Metropolitan better than 
anywhere else. Good-night again!" 




Chapter XIX 

NIGHT IN THE SLUMS — A BOWERY CONCERT HALL — A 

MORAL IMMORALITY SHOW A NIGHT's LODGING 

FOR FIVE CENTS AMATEUR NIGHT A CONCERT SA- 
LOON VICIOUSNESS ON THE UPPER WEST SIDE 

EAST-SIDE GANGS DULNESS UNDER THE LID— A 

JEWISH VAUDEVILLE A STREET FIGHT PICKPOCKETS 

AND LOW SALOONS KNOCKOUT DROPS — A POLICE 

COURT SCENE 

SHE was rather plump for a soubrette, since 
she tipped the scale at over 200 pounds, 
but she wore short skirts, revealing a pair of 
grand-piano legs, and she sang in a still, small 
voice. At the end of each stanza she cried: 

"Join in, boys!" 

The boys consisted of an overripe human 
tomato sound asleep at a small table; two Ameri- 
can sailors extremely decollete and half afloat; 
three or four middle-aged creatures whose per- 
sonal attractions were those of washerwomen; 
a waiter, and a dismal mechanic at the piano, 
technically known as the ''professor who hits the 
box;" also A. J. Joyce and ''Ananias" Blake. 

As Joyce seemed to be the only visitor with an 
inclination to buy, he was the observed of all 
observers. His amusement at the kittenish 
behemoth on the stage was increased by her sue- 



348 Zhc IRcal mew ^ov\{ 

cessor, a woman of a homely and spinster type 
of countenance, one of those whom we think of as 
virtuous by compulsion. She was what they 
call in the Bowery concert halls a "classic" 
singer, for down there any song that is not 
"rough house" is classic. On the rickety little 
stage in a common kitchen chair sat the third 
of the graces, a vivacious little plebeian with a 
gesture for each word of the rattling gossip she 
kept up with her companions. 

In the hope of preventing further music Joyce 
called a waiter and said: 

"The girls look very thirsty; perhaps they'd 
like some beer up in the balcony." 

The waiter surrounded the affair with an air 
of great mystery and danger, but the girls, after 
slipping on long skirts over their short ones, 
found their way to a table in the gallery running 
around the hall. Joyce and Blake ordered 
beer, though the girls insinuated that champagne 
was an interesting beverage. 

"Don't try to work a good thing to death," 
said Joyce. "Beer is what you'll get." 

The ladies compromised on claret. Blake 
explained that, as they got a commission on every 
sale, it would be bad form to limit the expendi- 
ture too severely. Blake was always very anx- 
ious that Joyce should not err on the side of lim- 
iting the expenditure too severely. 

Joyce lost little time in asking the usual ques- 
tion: "How did you come to this?" 



IRujbt in tbc Slume 



349 



The homely spinster explained witli chin still 
tremulous : 

*'You see, I was born in Skaneateles, and my 
parents is very respectable. Oh, they're right 
in the push in Skaneateles. Paw is the best 
sign-painter in town. They give 
me a splendid education— oh, I 
was educated grand! But one 
day along come a handsome 
traveling man — oh, but he was a 
handsome devil! — and he stole 
my young affections, and asked 
me to run off with 'um. He 
promised to marry me — honest 
he did — and then we come to 
New York, and then he deserted 
me cruel. And that is how I 
come to this. Maw would be 
broken-hearted if she knowed I 
was in this business." 

Joyce noticed that the sou- 
brette of the cetacean school was sobbing 
violently. 

"What's the matter with you?" growled 
Joyce, and the answer came: 
"— — her, she told my story!" 
While she wept Joyce turned to the vivacious 
girl whose beauty had a trace of honesty and of 
young innocence that might mean genuine in- 
nocence or might accompany extraordinary 
viciousness. He asked her if she did not 




WEST SIDE SWELL 



350 Zbc IRcal mew ^ov\\ 

manage to make considerable additions to her 
regular salary. She was almost indignant at 
the implication, and answered: 

"Well, if I wasn't straight I wouldn't be 
working here, singin' from two in the afternoon 
to midnight, seven evenings a week for $10 and 
20 per cent, on the drinks I can sell the cheap 
skates that comes in here. When midnight comes 
I'm dog tired, and it's me for home in a street 
car. I don't go home in no automobile, and I 
don't wear no necklaces of real polls. This 
string of beads cost me fifteen cents. I live with 
my mother, an' she takes in washing. So I 
guess I'm straight all right, all right." 

Then her native cheeriness resumed its sway; 
she burst out laughing: 

" Mother thinks I am a great actress, and she 
is always sayin' : * Why ain't your pictures in the 
paper ? I am always seein' Maude Adams and 
this Eyetalian Doos, but I don't never see 
yours. 

Joyce was grievously disappointed at the tame- 
ness of the conversation and the constant fear 
the women expressed of the police. 

"Why, would you believe it.^" said the plump 
one, now restored to equanimity, though still 
looking with scorn on the plagiarist, "the police 
won't let a lady come in this place alone. She's 
got to have a escort. That means money to a 
new kind of grafter. They are a lot o' young 
loafers that hangs around the doors, and they'll 



ItAiobt in tbc Slutn^ 351 

escort one of these girls inside for fifteen cents; 
then they leave her at a table alone." 

Joyce was restless to be away, and asked the 
waiter for his bill. 

''Two dollars," said the waiter, with extreme 
graciousness. 

"Two dollars for two beers and three glasses 
of cheap claret!" exclaimed Joyce, enraged. But 
Blake calmed him. 

"Take your medicine like a man; we all try 
to get all we can in our business." 

Joyce found that his smallest change was a 
twenty-dollar bill. The waiter regarded it with 
beaming eyes and explained: 

"Oh, we can change a hundred for you just 
as easy; and it is all reliable — we don't shove no 
queer in this place." 

He returned shortly with a roll of bills, 
counted it and placed it in Joyce's hands. 

"Better count that yourself," said Blake. 

Joyce counted it and began to roar. 

"There is only $17.00 here. Come up, come 
up; you can't work your short change game on 
me. 

The waiter, unabashed, took the money from 
Joyce and counted it over himself. 

"Right you are. I am shy one dollar." 

He reached in his waistcoat pocket and took 
out a greasy bill, which he gave to Joyce. The 
Chicagoan, with a triumphant leer, was about 
to put the money in his purse. 



352 ^.be 1RcaI mew ^ovli 

''Better count that again," said Blake, quietly 
Joyce counted and grew purple in the face. 

"You blamed thief! There is only $12 here." 

Without the faintest sign of embarrassment 
the waiter took the money and ran over it once 
more. Then with a laugh he said : 

''Right you are." 

He handed back Joyce the money and took 
five from his other waistcoat pocket. 

Joyce was tucking the bills away in still greater 
triumph. 

"Better count that again," said Blake. 

The next tally showed $10. Joyce now began 
to bellow so loudly that the proprietor came up. 
He made a very poor pretense at indignation 
that such a thing should happen in his place. 

"Let me count that again," said the waiter. 

"No, you don't," said Joyce. "You must 
think I am easy. Give up that $8 or I'll call 
the police." 

The waiter tried hard to get another chance 
at counting the money, but Joyce was adamant 
and the proprietor sided with him. The waiter 
went through his pockets and turned out $5, 
which he solemnly swore was every cent he had; 
but at the magic word "police" he managed to 
discover $3 more, and without the faintest sign 
of ill-feeling or humiliation bowed Joyce out. 

As they strolled along the Bowery, now in the 
full blaze of night, Joyce was attracted by a 
museum of ostentatious wickedness. The post- 



Cn, . 




THE BOWERY 



mm in tbc Slume 353 

ers were as risky as the law allows. The win- 
dow was full of suggestive photographs. To 
crown all there was a conspicuous sign, "For 
Men Only. No Minors Admitted." At the 
door stood a barker of leering mien, and he 
barked in a mysteriously low tone. Joyce could 
not resist his blandishments; here was plainly 
something wicked which the police had not re- 
pressed. The admission fee let him into a room 
with a disappointingly virtuous series of peep- 
holes, which revealed cheap chromos of scenery 
and battle pictures. A badly carved "fossil 
giant" lay in a coffin. It was a bad imitation 
of that famous Cardiff giant which was buried 
near Syracuse, rediscovered by accident and 
brought to New York by the arch-humbug, P. T. 
Barnum. But Joyce was not one of the typical 
Americans in whom Barnum found such a love 
for being humbugged. He strenuously objected 
to the unobjectionable nature of this exhibition. 
Then another barker beckoned him to another 
room, where "something was really doing." 
He paid an extra admission and entered this 
unholy of unholies. But his hopes fell again 
as he found a still more blameless collection of 
old newspapers. Civil War envelopes, wax casts 
of famous criminals and two or three slot ma- 
chines. He felt helpless, however, as he real- 
ized how impossible it would be to drag these 
men into police court for not showing him any- 
thing truly immoral. The other dupes in the 
23 



354 ^be IReal flew l^orl? 

room looked sheepishly at one another, grinned 
and slunk out without a word. In the whole 
psychology of swindling there is surely nothing 
more ingenious than this method of playing 
upon evil instincts without risking the vengeance 
of the law. 

Joyce dawdled along the Bowery, looking list- 
lessly for something vicious. Here was a shoot- 
ing gallery, announced by an incessant buzzing 
of bells and the short snap of small rifles; but 
it did not interest him. No more was he at- 
tracted by the galleries with long rows of mov- 
ing pictures and the phonographs with their pro- 
miscuous ear tubes. He did not care to have 
his tintype taken; he did not care to test his 
lungs; he did not care to take one of those elec- 
tric shocks the medicinal virtue of which the 
barker was constantly recommending. He had 
been in one concert hall and the rest did not 
interest him, though, judging from the litho- 
graphs shamelessly displayed outside, most of 
the prominent stars were appearing on the dingy 
little stage; for here were posters of May Irwin, 
Ethel Barry more, Mrs. Leslie Carter, Marie Tem- 
pest and Fritzi Scheff. Joyce was not even at- 
tracted by the Museum of Anatomy, where, for 
the trifling sum of ten cents, one can provide 
himself with bad dreams of disease and destruc- 
tion enough for a lifetime. 

Blake offered to show him one of those lodging 
houses with the attractive sign, "Rooms for 



miObt in tbe Slunta 355 

Gentlemen Only. Five and Ten Cents." But 
Joyce had often looked from the Elevated into 
the reception-rooms of these caravansaries where 
the professional beggar, or panhandler, the sand- 
wich man, the political floater, the super- 
shabby genteel and the victims of bad luck and 
bad whisky doze all day long in preparation for 
a night of sleep in a cubbyhole, on a populous 
couch spread with blankets that are rarely 
changed. Joyce was not to be induced into any 
of the Hebrew theatres, though at two of them 
the "Fall of Port Arthur" was dramatized in 
advance. He would not be diverted even into 
entering one of the cheap theatres where low 
burlesque troupes conducted an anatomical show, 
where a slap stick is a wand of the harlequin 
and the highest form of repartee is a kick in 
the stomach. 

It was Amateur Night at one of the theatres, 
and Blake promised Joyce a rare treat in the ex- 
hibition of the volunteers who are courageous 
enough to submit their art to the hilarious ver- 
dict of the gallery. But Joyce was out for vice. 
Blake was getting tired and very thirsty and 
suggested a halt at one of the cheap concert 
saloons near Chatham Square. 

Here was the very subterranean grotto of the 
submerged tenth. The usual saloon, save for an 
unusual sloppiness, led to a back room filled with 
small tables and crowded with soldiers, sailors, 
workingmen, cooks, ladies of the pavement and 



356 ^be IReal mew ^ov\\ 

the impresarios who live upon their earnings. 
At a rickety piano sat a hard-working mechanic 
in shirt sleeves, whose most artistic effect was a 
so-called mandolin attachment, which gave the 
decrepit instrument a still tinnier sound. A 
youth in a striped sweater stood alongside and 
roared out dismal melodies in a saturated voice. 

Joyce and Blake sat down at a dripping table 
and a waiter of pugilistic manner brought them 
glasses of diluted beer, mostly collar — the art of 
putting the maximum amount of foam in a glass 
being the foundation of a barkeeper's education. 

At the next table sat two middle-aged women 
in a boozy blear. One of these grisly old 
Fates smiled upon Joyce with what was meant 
for seduction — the result was a queasy sensa- 
tion that reminded him of the English Channel. 
The other poor old hulk was devoid of a nose, 
but none the less she was blissfully looking in a 
mirror to see if her hat was on straight. 

Still Joyce hungered for something wickeder 
than this. Blake grew impatient, and said: 

"Real vice is not attractive or pretty or im- 
posing. You can go down toward the river 
where there are various low dives, but they are 
all very much afraid of strangers, for every 
stranger may be a detective. The toughest part 
of New York has moved uptown. The place 
they call Hell's Kitchen is in the Twenties, but 
you would hardly know that you were in any place 
of especial wickedness, unless you went into a 



mUjbt in tbc Sluni0 



357 



back room of some saloon on Seventh Avenue 
near Twenty-seventh Street, frequented by 
vicious negroes and still lower white trash, and 
allowed some young tough to pick a quarrel 
with you, which he would be willing to do if you 
looked as if you had a dollar on your person." 




"" DE GANG 



Blake now remembered an imaginary engage- 
ment at his newspaper office, and said that he 
must leave Joyce to shift for himself. Joyce 
asked a few questions and seemed chiefly anx- 
ious to invade the haunts of Cherry Hill and in- 
spect the Happy Hunting Grounds of the gang 
that "Monk" Eastman led before he was sent 
up for trying to rob a young drunkard in evening 
dress and shooting at the police who interfered. 

"To murder is not the monopoly of the East 



358 Zbc IRcal mew l^orl^ 

Side," said Blake, **and the red spots are all 
over town. The most horrible crime of all was, 
perhaps, the one that took place at the Empire, 
a drinking hall in Twenty-ninth Street, a few 
doors from Broadway, where an employee of 
the place beheaded a man and then tried to 
burn his body in the furnace. 

"If you are going on the East Side, the main 
thing you will notice will be the stupidity of 
everything and the quiet conversations in the 
saloons. Even the hotbeds of crime do not 
furnish more than three or four murders a year, 
and you must not be disappointed if you do not 
find wholesale butchery going on. The main 
thing is to keep out of a fight. 

"As for the gangs, there are a lot of them; 
the Five Points gang, the Gas House crowd, the 
Paul Kelly clique, the Yake-Yake Brady gang 
and the members of the 'Monk' Eastman fra- 
ternity are a few of. the most notorious. But 
you would not know them if you saw them. 
For manifest reasons they do not foregather in 
public, and they are simply more or less well- 
dressed rowdies. 

"Keep your mind on your watch, don't get 
into a crowd, and be careful what you drink — 
and, above all, mind your own business. If 
Mr. Yake-Yake Brady wandered into your ath- 
letic club he would probably be thrown out. 
Every saloon is a club for its regular patrons, and 
you need not expect politer treatment than you 



IHicjbt in tbe Sluine 359 

would show to anyone who came snooping 
around into your affairs." 

With this advice Blake made his escape, and 
Joyce started on his errand of inquisitiveness. 

He dropped into one saloon where Blake had 
told him vice once reared its head. But the 
hostess behind the bar was dejected and cynical; 
the weight of the Lid was heavy on her soul, and 
the burden of her wail was, "Nothin' doin'!" 

''I've saw me day. The police owns this 
town, and they keep it shut up now. They bar 
a lady out of her own home. If you want to see 
anything lively, the only place to go is the Station 
House. We are all dead ones. I guess I'll 
pack up my duds and go to the Colored Folks' 
Home. Nothin' doin' in this town no more!" 

Joyce took a peek into the back room where 
once the sound of revelry was high. The only 
tenants now were a yawning girl and a dejected 
youth listening to a twangy phonograph whence 
issued an uncanny comic song that added to the 
gloom of the situation. 

Joyce wandered away and got himself lost in 
the twisting streets. Bright lights drew him to 
a music-hall in Eldredge Street where the signs 
were in Hebrew. He entered and found a seat 
near an almost pretty little Jewess, who forewent 
the formalities of an introduction and explained 
to him that this was a benefit night for one of the 
company. Once in a while it was permitted 
a member of the troupe to add to his salary by 



360 z\)c IReal IRew l^ork 

renting the hall for one evening and filling it to 
the best of his ability. The rest of the company 
gladly volunteered their services. The girl ex- 
plained the plot of the play, a combination of 
foreign customs with American surroundings. 

The hours passed pleasantly in the company 
of the almost pretty interpreter, and she had 
permitted Joyce to hold her hand. But she 
resisted further advances and explained : 

"I've got a faller. I work by a jewelry." 

Finally he bade her good-night and she shook 
hands cordially with him, saying: 

"Vull, I am glat to meet your acquaintance." 

Joyce drifted out into the night, somewhat 
shamefaced over his repulsed advances, yet 
cherishing a tender memory of the little Yiddish 
flower blooming in the rough loam of the slums. 

He looked at his watch. It was eleven o'clock, 
and he had seen nothing to quicken a pulse. 
Up and down the dreary streets he meandered. 
All saloons looked alike to him. Some of them 
were surprisingly gorgeous. In "Silver Dollar 
Smith's" place there was a silver dollar in the 
floor here and there, but Joyce had seen that 
in the Palmer House at home. 

A sovmd of shrill riot caught his ear. He 
found two gamins fighting with all the ferocity 
of the gutter cubs. He joined the crowd and 
relished the work of the toy gladiators. Sud- 
denly someone cried: 

"Cheese it, de cop!" 



micjbt in tbc Sluing 36i 

There was a scramble. Joyce was jostled and 
hustled, and — then he was alone. No poHce- 
man appeared. 

"False alarm," laughed Joyce. He looked 
at his watch; or, rather, he looked for his watch. 
He felt for his purse; non est inventus. He 
clutched at his scarfpin. It proved an alibi. 

Even Joyce could not withhold admiration for 
the neatness of such a job. 

** Good work !" he laughed. ** Time for spring 
house cleaning, anyway.. I'm much obliged to 
'em for leaving me my trousers." 

On second inspection he found some loose 
coin in his pocket. He turned and called out: 

"Here, come back; you've forgotten some- 
thing." 

No one answered his invitation. 

He decided to go home. But he had lost his 
sense of direction and could not orientate him- 
self. He asked various passers-by to tell him 
his way and immediately forgot their labyrin- 
thian advice. Aiming for the interior, he found 
himself on the river front. 

He looked in at a saloon filled with sailors 
and their sweethearts. Joyce had a wholesome 
dread of the knockout drop, and in all the 
saloons he had visited he had bought cigars 
instead of the beer that was certain to be 
diluted if not drugged. But here the bar was 
neat, and thirst and fatigue were heavy upon 
him; so he ordered beer. 



362 z\)c 1Real IRcw ^ov\\ 

A man detached himself from one of the 
tables and, leaning alongside Joyce, observed that 
it was a pleasant evening. Joyce was always 
glad of an excuse to talk. He invited the stran- 
ger to drink. The stranger invited Joyce to 
drink. He was well-dressed and he wore a mild 
look, so Joyce assented. Then Joyce treated. 
Then the stranger treated. Joyce retained cau- 
tion enough to see that even this fair-spoken 
person should not touch his glass, and that 
the barkeeper should put nothing in it. But 
what was to prevent the barkeeper from taking 
a glass in which there was a drug already 
waiting ? Joyce had not thought of that. And 
suddenly he did not think of anything except 
the remarkable weakness of his knees and his 
amazing drowsiness. Then he ceased to think 
even of that. He was a heap on the floor. 

In an instant the genial stranger had him by 
the collar and dragged him to a back room. 
There he went through all the pockets. The 
result surprised him. 

"Stung, by !" he roared. "The dog's 

on'y got eighty-fi' cents, and the knockout drops 
cost me $2! I'll kick his slats in for 'um!" 

But the other members of the gang restrained 
the victim of Joyce's deceit. The barkeeping 
confederate declined to have the body found 
round his place. So, after a proper reconnais- 
sance for the police, Joyce was picked up, toted 
to a dark side street and left on a doorstep. 



miQbt in tbe Sluin0 



363 



There he was found at 3 a.m., still comatose. 
He had no money to pay carfare. He did not 
need it. The city took him to a hospital in an 
ambulance. Victims of knockout drops usually 
die; but the dose given to Joyce had been com- 
paratively weak, and by six o'clock the physi- 
cians had pried his one foot out of the grave. 
The police decided to put the other into the 
police court. Joyce was arraigned for disor- 




THE MORNING AFTER 



derly conduct and disturbing a doorstep. He 
expressed some surprise at being arrested. The 
sergeant explained that the policy in New York 
is, '*When in doubt, pinch." 

*'But how could I commit disorderly conduct 
when I was — ossified .^" 

The sergeant explained that "disorderly con- 
duct" is a merely formal charge, a card of ad- 
mission, as it were, to be exchanged for a more 
definite tag. He was taken to the police court 
in a wagon now grown familiar to him. 

The white-haired Judge sat on high and lis- 



364 ^be IRcal IRcw lJ)orh 

tened with little enthusiasm to the stories told 
him. He neither admired the imagination dis- 
played nor warmed to the tales of how the best 
motives in the world had been misconstrued by 
the neighbors and the police. He recognized 
many of the visitors — the inveterate old ine- 
briates; the swaggering solicitress, who winked 
at His Honor; the shuffling sneak thief, who 
couldn't imagine how somebody's else watch got 
into his hand; the well-dressed automobilist, 
whose machine could not possibly have gone 
over eight miles an hour and three children a 
mile; the young rounder, still in his evening 
dress, with his shirt crumpled and his hair 
rumpled ; the hard-working woman pleading for 
the worthless husband who used her for a com- 
bination of pocketbook and punching bag. 

There used to be a sprinkling of juvenile of- 
fenders in this procession, but wise and humane 
counsels prevailed, and there is now a separate 
Children's Court, where undergraduate crime is 
examined and an effort made to turn the mis- 
directed little feet into the main road before 
primitive instincts become a chronic disease of 
lawlessness. 

Eventually it was Joyce's turn to appear at 
the bar. 

"What's your name.^" the Judge asked, 
sharply. 

"J — J — James K. Polk," said Joyce. 

"Ever been arrested before.^" 



migbt in tbc Slume 365 

"A — a few times." Joyce could not deny it 
before those cold eyes. 

" Humph, a professional criminal, eh ? Where 
do you come from ?'' 

'* Chicago," he faltered. 

'*Ten years at hard labor," said the Judge, 
and the court clerks, whose preferment depended 
on their agility in discovering His Honor's jokes, 
roared with laughter. 

The policeman explained that there was no 
real charge against the prisoner, and at length 
the Justice relented. He dismissed Joyce, after 
reading him a needless lecture on the mistakes 
made by Old Dog Tray and many another sad 
old dog. 

Joyce borrowed carfare from the policeman 
and flew to *' Ananias" Blake. Blake thought 
the whole affair a huge joke, till Joyce told him 
he would have to lend him enough money to get 
back to Chicago. This sobered "Ananias" in- 
stantly, and he was about to practise the sub- 
terfuge of his namesake, but Joyce's look was so 
woebegone that he asked the city editor for 
enough to transport the Chicagoan. 

The city editor remembered that the news- 
paper had transportation due it for railroad 
advertising, and he furnished Joyce with a 
certificate that he was a member of the staff. 

"Lord, I'm going from bad to worse," said 
Joyce. Then he wished to apologize, but Blake 
explained that it was impossible to hurt a news- 



366 ^be IRcal mew !?ork 

paper man's feelings, and held up a reporter 
(who wrote up the baseball games in summer and 
the concerts in winter) for enough cash to see 
Joyce safely beyond Lake Michigan. Blake 
was wonderfully ingenious in showing other peo- 
ple ways of investing money. 



Chapter XX 

a round-up the many faults of new york! noise, 

crowding, impoliteness, expense, homelessness 

bronx park the jumel mansion and other his- 
toric places the columbia library the metro- 
politan gallery private collections the aqua- 
rium battery park bowling green the statue 

of liberty a storm in the bay daybreak bon 

voyage! 

^ ' T3 UT, I say, old chap, hasn't New York 
JlJ any faults at all?" Calverly com- 
plained. 

"A billion," said De Peyster. It was about 
one o'clock Friday morning, and they were 
knocking the balls about in the De Peyster bil- 
liard-room while Consuelo was perched on a 
high chair, dreaming of herself as an English 
peeress playing billiards with old coronets. 

"Every inhabitant has at least two faults 
apiece. That makes a rather respectable total 
in itself. Then there is the noise; the roar of 
the busy streets is so terrific that it is almost 
impossible to talk; in summer, when the win- 
dows must be open, the uproar almost drowns 
the heat. Where asphalt pavement is down 
there is some relief, but elsewhere it is one horri- 
ble cacophony of slamming, squeaking and gong- 



368 z\)C IReal IHcw l^oih 

banging surface cars, Elevated cars and automo- 
bile horns, trucks, bicycles, horses' hoofs. And 
then the street cries! — not musical calls as in 
France, but hideous yawps from raw-throated 
fiends with faces that resemble their vegetables. 

" Another great fault of New York is the crowd- 
ing. The roadways are, as a rule, less crowd- 
ed than in London, but that is because people 
over there are not packed and jammed into large 
street cars and Elevated roads as they are in 
New York, and because the narrow twisting 
streets of London congest the traffic — the man- 
agement of that traffic, by the way, is the thing 
which Americans most admire in London. 
Your bobbies would not stand much chance in 
a fight with our coppers, but they get far more 
respect from the drivers, and everybody says 
they are infinitely politer than our policemen, 
though I, for one, have never been insulted by a 
New York policeman, nor have I found one un- 
willing to give me any information. 

"But the crowding in the street cars and Ele- 
vated trains is one of the chief faults of New 
York. It is indecent, it is exhausting to the 
last degree, and, worst of all, there seems to be no 
possible cure, owing to the shape of the city. 

"The chief fault in New York found by 
strangers is the impoliteness of the people. A 
majority vote would probably give New York 
the disgrace of being the most impolite city in 
the world. The worst of it is that the people 



know better. It is not the bad manners of un- 
couth boors, who are rude without meaning to 
be, but it is the wilful insolence of well-bred 
and sophisticated people who understand the 
etiquette, not only of their own nation, but of 
most of the others. 

"The enormous expensiveness of New York 
is another vital fault. Food is high, though in 
many respects not so high as in London ; but the 
rents are skyscraping, and they are getting higher 
every year. Then everyone in New York is 
trying to keep up a bluff of having more than his 
real income. Few people are willing to retire 
on a modest stipend, as in London, and they 
wear themselves out in their fiendish devotion 
to business and their equally fiendish devotion to 
pleasure or the pursuit of pleasure. 

"To New Yorkers themselves the greatest 
fault of the city is its homelessness. We live 
in layers; the vast majority have not even a sin- 
gle floor that is all their own, to say nothing of 
a complete house. And those who own a 
house have no lawns, no gardens, no privacy ex- 
cept inside the doors with curtains drawn. It 
is this fact that makes New York people im- 
polite. Their only way of getting privacy is by 
mentally withdrawing themselves from the crowd 
that is packed about them. New Yorkers do 
not know even the names of people in their own 
apartment house or next door. 

"To Western people the New Yorker is a 
24 



/ 



370 zhc IReal IRew l^orft 

byword of impoliteness. But New York is 
largely populated by Western people. They 
come here with their chivalric notions, but they 
soon get the bloom rubbed off. The Westerner 
who would not dream of allowing a washer- 
woman to stand up in a street car, after three 
years in New York will hardly give his seat to a 
lame old lady. The New Yorker must be selfish 
or become a worm. It is the conditions and 
not the people that are impolite." 

**Well," said Calverly, with a yawn, "as you 
Yankees say, 'I guess that'll be about all.' I'm 
going to bed. Good-night, Consuelo." 

"I am for bed, too," said De Peyster. "For, 
after telling you what a mass of faults this old 
town is, I've got to spend to-morrow proving 
that it is nothing short of Paradise." 

The next morning early he and Myrtle were 
on their way to Bronx Park, to begin a grand 
round-up of the city's beauties. 

They wandered about this wild region and 
smiled at the pretty little stream that once turned 
the snuff mills that built the Lorillard fortunes. 
They sauntered through the Botanical Gardens, 
which will, when completed, equal any in the 
world, and the Zoological Park, with its superb 
lion palace and its reproduction of native haunts 
of animals, which will, when stocked, surpass 
any similar institution of educational cruelty in 
the world. 

Myrtle was in raptures over the color schemes 



of the floral opulence, and she was eager to be 
sketeliing the four-footed foreigners pacing their 
lairs in the discontent of imprisoned outlaws. 
De Peyster seized upon her mood as an oppor- 
tunity for persuading her to linger in the scenes 
she had grown to like. 

" Don't go to Paris," he pleaded. " Stay here 
and paint New York a delicate flamingo." 

"But 1 must study my art." 

"You can study here — at the Art Students' 
League, for instance. There are many good 
judges who say the training is better than in 
your Paris ateliers, where a famous painter looks 
in once a week and gives you an epigram; the 
rest of the time you spend imitating the classics 
or chasing some of the crazy schemes of the an- 
archists. Stay here and be an American." 

" But I must see the great architecture and the 
galleries — the Louvre, the Luxembourg, the 
National Gallery, the Vatican, the " 

"All those will come in due time. There are 
enough of the old masters here to keep you busy 
a long while. The Metropolitan Museum of Art 
alone will repay years of study. It has a splen- 
did collection of casts from the antique sculptures 
and reproductions of the best bronzes. It has 
the finest collection of goldsmith's work in the 
world, donated by J. Pierpont Morgan; the finest 
collection of Cyprian antiquities ; the second best 
collection of Babylonian cylinders; the best col- 
lection of American painters, and the finest col- 



372 Zbc IRcal mew lJ)ork 

lection in America of foreign masters. Raphael 
is almost the only master not represented. We 
have Michelangelo, da Vinci, Correggio, Ti- 
tian, Rubens, Rembrandt — hundreds of great 
works. Then we have some of the greatest 
works of the latest English, French, Spanish and 
Italian geniuses. The Metropolitan does not 
yet rival some of the Old World galleries, for it 
depends on private gifts and has no government 
support from this inartistic Republic; but it is 
growing rapidly. 

"Then there are the selling galleries, where 
the best foreign painters exhibit their latest 
works, for the American dollar draws the artist 
in oil as well as the singers and actors. And 
then there are the splendid private collections, 
like that of Mr. Yerkes, who has spent two mil- 
lion dollars on his paintings. I can get you ad- 
mission to these. In fact, in spite of our inferi- 
ority to Paris, Rome and London, there are far 
more masterpieces in New York than most 
people ever see in a lifetime." 

But still she would not be moved. They left 
the Bronx and moved southward, pausing at the 
old gem of Colonial home-craft at One Hundred 
and Sixty-first Street, the Jumel mansion. It 
was built in 1758 for Mary Philipse, whom 
Washington wooed. Later it was the home of 
Mme. Jumel, whom Aaron Burr duped into 
marriage and bankrupted before she divorced 
him. A mile or more away is Edgar Allan Poe's 



cottage in Forclhain. De Peyster and Myrtk* 
next made their way down to Morningside 
Heights and the cluster of buildings devoted to 
Columbia University. This also is historic soil, 
watered with the blood of our forefathers. The 
Engineering Building marks the victory of Har- 
lem Heights, one of the few bright spots in this 
period of the war. Barnard College for Women 
covers the "Bloody Buckwheat Field." 

Myrtle was less affected, however, by the 
vague story of these early skirmishes than by 
the marble perfections of the Columbia Library, 
a million-dollar gift by Seth Low in memory of 
his father. There are 235,000 volumes on the 
shelves within, making it the fourth largest li- 
brary in the country. But the exterior of the 
building is surpassed for beauty by none other 
on this earth. 

It was now the hour for luncheon, and De 
Peyster called a hansom and directed the driver 
to Claremont. The atmosphere of the place and ^ 
the vivacity of the guests gathering here, far 
from the haunts of business, in carriages and 
drags, on horseback and in automobiles, exliila- 
rated Myrtle as with wine. They sat on the 
glass-inclosed veranda, and, as they ate, gazed 
almost with reverence upon the broad river, mag- 
nificent among its lofty parapets. Myrtle drew 
in a deep breath of exultation. 

"You'll miss that view in Paris," declared De 
Peyster. 



874 



Z\K IRcal mew l^orft 



She would have had him stay awhile, but he 
said there was no time to spare. Down the 
green aisles of Riverside Drive the horse pat- 
tered, and she would have lingered here also; 
but still De Peyster said, "We have no time." 
Then they turned into Central Park and rounded 
its wooded curves. Vista after vista brought 
little gasps of delight from Myrtle. 

They descended at the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, but De Peyster insisted that she should 
simply have a glimpse of it. Myrtle would have 
spent a hundred hours before the gems of this 
casket. Here was Rubens, and there Van Dyke. 
These canvases rejoiced in the miracles of Ve- 
lasquez, the irresistible bonhomie of Franz Hals, 
the poetic mists of Corot, the warm-blooded 
drama of an Inness landscape, the velvet of 
Diaz, the placid cattle of Troyon, the huge 
power of Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair," the 
multum in parvo of Meissonier, the broadsword 
play of Sargent — all the glories of all the schools 
from the cool morning of the classics to the high 

noon of the impression- 
ists. But De Peyster 
would not let Myrtle 
pause, and when she in- 
sisted he took her by the 
arm and told her if she 
would avoid a 
scene she must 
come along. 




a iRoiui&:-Trip 



875 



Again they took a hansom and sped through 
the Park, into the Plaza and down Fifth Avenue 
through the stately homes, the brilliant shops, 
the general uplift of luxury. Ahead of them 
loomed the Flatiron like a great chalk cliff. 

''Nothing like that abroad," said De Peyster. 

As they neared Thirty-fourth Street they 
passed an enormous coach-and-six that excited 
Myrtle's lively interest. 

"What is it — the 'Four Hundred' in a 
coaching party .^" she queried. 

"That's the 'Seeing New York' coach, one 
of the city's newest attractions," responded De 
Peyster. "Twice every day a load of sight- 
seers starts from the Flatiron Building and 
makes the tour of the city, with a guide to 
point out all the landmarks. — Here we are," 
and he helped her from the cab under the por- 
tico of the Waldorf. 

In the midst of the creature comforts, external 
and internal, of the Waldorf Palm Room De 
Peyster exclaimed: 

"Great heavens! You haven't seen the one 
must-be-seen of New York. You wouldn't dare 
to look a Frenchman in the face and tell him you 
hadn't visited the Statue of Liberty which his 
country gave to us as a token of the liberty 
which she made possible for us." 

Myrtle was fain to loiter under the sheltering 
palms, but De Peyster was inexorable and 
dragged her to the nearest Elevated station. 



376 



Z\K IRcal mew ^ov^ 



They reached South Ferry just in time to miss a 
boat, which gave them leisure to glance at the 
Aquarium, with its 3,000 living people of the 
sea, and its 300,000 gallons of salt water changed 
every day. The shapes of these citizens of 
another element were often unbeautiful, and, as 
they drifted forward to the glass to stare in 
great-eyed amazement at the staring humans, 
there was little to admire in their contour or 
their expression. But their colors! In the 
prism of the water, among rich ferns and sands 
and rocks, these patches of living light seemed 
to live in a world of crumbled rainbows. 

As De Peyster and Myrtle issued from the 
Aquarium, they dawdled for a time about Battery 
Park, into whose beau- 
tiful welcome the in- 
coming immigrants are 
spilled by the thousand 
after their stay on Ellis 
Island. 

Battery Park, once 
the aristocratic ramble 
of the young city, was 
beautiful at this hour in 
the red garb of a sunset 

that lit up with fire the glowering rain clouds 
that had gathered swiftly. 

A step to the north was Bowling Green, a 
drilling ground for the Dutch in 1626 and a 
bowling green for the British in 1732; later the 




FROM THE FATHERLAND 



a iRounb^inp 377 

site of a leaden statue of George the Third, 
which was erected in 1766 and ten years later 
was torn down by the Sons of Liberty, who re- 
turned it to its English owners in the form of 
some 40,000 bullets. The old iron railing is 
still there but it has lost the crowns that once 
adorned it. And it surrounds no longer the 
statue of a British king, but that of an old Dutch 
merchant who prospered here in 1700. 

Myrtle looked at the statue in amazement. 

"Why, it's Abraham De Peyster!" 

"Yes, an ancestor of mine," said Gerald. 

"How glorious to have an ancestor 200 years 
old, with a statue in a place of such honor." 

"You can acquire that ancestor by marriage." 

"There is the boat," cried Myrtle. "But it 
is getting late and it is going to rain." 

None the less they decided to take the risk. 
The wind was rising and the smallish boat 
bounced and tossed in the choppy sea. Myrtle 
looked uneasy. 

"There will be seven days of this crossing the 
ocean," said De Peyster, tauntingly. 

But Myrtle survived the voyage of a single 
mile, and they soon debarked at the little island, 
just large enough to hold the largest statue in 
the history of the world. Its pedestal rises 
from the salients of old Fort Wood. The idea 
came to Bartholdi in 186.5 — an idea as large as 
its embodiment has been. He proposed it to 
the French people, who were more enthusiastic 



378 Zhc IReal 1Rcvx> ^ov\\ 

over the gift than the Americans were in build- 
ing the pedestal to receive it. In 1879 he be- 
gan the work, and in 1886 it was ready for the 
pedestal, the funds of which were collected only 
by the efforts of the New York World. The de- 
sign was from the inspiration of Richard M. 
Hunt, to whom America owes many of its no- 
blest works of architecture. 
V They say Bartholdi's mother posed for the 

statue, and there is a benignity and a maternity 
in the figure far more appropriate than any less 
solid structure would have been in typifying the 
ideal that stands at the door of a new world, 
holding aloft the lamp of freedom and shelter. 

A few of the visitors felt bold enough to at- 
tempt the climb to the torch, poised three hun- 
dred and five feet above the sea. The first half 
of the climb brought the weary sightseers only 
to the top of the pedestal. Few of them cared 
to go farther, but Myrtle was determined to 
reach the apex, and they mounted the dark in- 
terior, lighted by electricity and criss-crossed 
by braces, till they reached the beginning of the 
long, double spiral stairway. This led them 
eventually to the crown of the statue; the open- 
ings were windows, whence they could see such 
a vision as greeted the eyes of Moses lifted up 
on Sinai. Their gaze swept the vast cyclorama, 
crowded with ships and cities and glittering with 
the gold dust of innumerable lights. The sky 
was black everywhere except in the West, where 



the dense clouds were smothering a last blaze 
of flamboyant red. 

*'lt was just such a sunset that greeted me 
when I flrst saw New York," said Myrtle. 

"Is it to be the last we shall see together?" 
said Gerald. 

And they fell silent, not heeding the disap- 
pearance of the few who had climbed with 
them. 

Suddenly the sunset was gone from the sky. 
A gun sounded dully from the little round fort 
of Castle Williams, on Governor's Island. The 
torch above them blossomed into sudden life, 
and they saw each other's faces as in a new day. 
Myrtle clasped her hands in ecstasy. 

"Surely there is no more glorious place than 
this on earth or above it," she said. 

A drop of water smote her clasped hands. A 
shower began to patter about them, and they 
hurried inside the statue. Every light was gone; 
it was pitch black within, and they stood at the 
top of a well one hundred and fifty feet deep. 
They groped cautiously down the stairway. It 
seemed that its coils would never end. Then 
down, step after step, in gloom and silence, to 
the door. It was closed, fastened! They 
pounded on it, but their blows sounded dead 
and puny. They called and cried aloud, but 
their voices went echoing faintly up the black 
cage. The great bronze ribs of the statue be- 
gan to quiver with the rising storm. An hour 



380 z\K IRcal mew l^ork 

or more they spent groping about the walls and 
pounding in vain. 

"I'll go back to the top and call from there," 
said Gerald. 

"I'll go with you," Myrtle said. 

"It is too far and you must be very tired," 
said Gerald. He had climbed wearily fifty steps 
or more when he heard her calling. 

"Wait! I am afraid to be here alone." 

She hurried up to his side. She did not ob- 
ject when he put his arm about her to help, 
though she knew how fagged he must be. They 
dragged their weary feet once more to the hate- 
ful spiral. He could not help her here and she 
must sit down often to rest. When they reached 
the crown again the storm was furious, and the 
statue rocked until it seemed certain to fall. 
While she waited within, he stood outside in 
the pelting rain and called. In the flashes of 
lightning he saw a sentinel hurrying along his 
post. Scream as he would, the storm screamed 
louder. And the sentinel kept his eyes on the 
great mountain of high buildings — Mount Babel 
— that rises in lower New York. Then, as the 
tempest increased in violence, he saw the man 
disappear into the shelter of the sentry-box. 
There was no hope now. He returned brooding 
and discouraged, and told Myrtle. 

"We might as well prepare to make a night 
of it," he ended. Myrtle took the blow with 
courage. They sat down on the steps and talked. 



a iRoim&^inp 381 

It was so very hard to hear that they must sit 
close together. She seemed to understand him 
better so. He told her how well he had learned 
to know her in this little week of their acquaint- 
ance. He told her that the thought of giving 
her up was agony, and that the only happiness 
he could see for the future was with her for 
wife. 

She protested at first that they did not know 
each other, but the storm and the solitude and 
the loneliness and his persuasive voice were 
pleadings too strong, and, at last, in a moment's 
hush of the storm, she whispered the "Yes." 
He drew off a ring his mother had given him and 
placed it on her finger. 

*'And now we are betrothed forever," said 
De Peyster. 

"Forever," said she. 

"Forever," roared the storm. 

They talked of the wedding and of the plans 
for their life, until the fatigue of the long day and 
the fatigue of great joy overweighted her with 
sleep. He took off his coat and folded it so that 
the dry lining of it should furnish her a silken 
pillow. Then he left her and climbed the stairs 
again, to see if there was yet a hope. But 
the storm still raged and the sentry still kept his 
hiding; the cities round about were hidden 
in rain and almost all the lights were quenched. 

In the Jersev meadows he watched the moving 
light of a train, like a little glow-worm. He 



382 Zbc IReal IRcw l^orft 

did not know that it carried Westward two 
acquaintances of his. One of them was Joyce 
and the other the Rev. Mr. Granger. They 
had shaken hands seriously when they met. 

"Wonderful city, New York," said the Rev. 
Mr. Granger. " It seems entirely devoted to the 
works of charity and the cultivation of all the vir- 
tues. I am going back to Terre Haute to do 
what I can to make my city imitate the ways of 
New York." 

Joyce looked at him with amazement and 
groaned. " Then God help Terre Haute. She'd 
better imitate old, innocent Chicago. I am go- 
ing home for a rest." He crept wearily into his 
bunk, to dream of expensive wickedness and 
deadly knockout drops, while his nostrils were 
filled with the odor of burning money. But of 
his dreams or of the Jacob's Ladder of saints that 
visited Mr. Granger's sleep, the far-off De 
Peyster neither knew nor cared in his storm- 
beaten eyrie. 

He turned back, niaking his way down the 
cavern again and finding Myrtle still asleep, he sat 
down to watch over her. Suddenly he started 
to find that the huge shell of the statue was 
filled with a dim light. The dawn was begin- 
ning. He stared up the shaft awhile, then, 
thinking tenderly of her, he looked down. 

Her eyes were wide. But there was such a 
dream in them that he bent slowly toward her 
and kissed her. And she, still half asleep, lifted 



H 1R0Utl^^lIlp 383 

an arm, placed it about him, and kissed 
him. 

There was no need of words. They under- 
stood. 

And now she was eager to greet the dawn. 
It evoked the workl and her heart answered. 
They cHmbed again slowly, wearily to the crown. 
The black fog was gray fleece now, and it was 
lifting like a mantle of ermine. Beneath it the 
dance of the waters grew merry. The world 
was rediscovered. It was growing upward out 
of the chaos. The base of the statue was plain. 
A sentinel yawned and stretched. Myrtle said: 

"Call him; he w^ill hear us now." 

"No, dear child," said De Peyster. "I've 
been thinking it over. If we let them know we 
have been here all night it will be in every after- 
noon paper. We've waited so long, we'll wait 
for the first boat from land. It will bring sight- 
seers and we can go back with them unnoticed." 

This sophistication in her behalf pleased her. 

The sun-red came leaping along the heavens. 
The great ball of fire itself rose in the east, 
broke loose from the horizon, floated free, 
lessening and brightening. The harbor w^oke 
to life; ferries pushed from every slip; there 
was a stir on the freighters lolling at anchor 
below; a huge liner came slowly up the Bay. 

At last he said, almost with regret: 

"There comes the first boatload of tourists, 
just starting from the Battery." 



384 



ZTbc IRcal IHcw l^ork 



It stopped in midstream to let a great ocean 
greyhound pass, bound outward, taking the 
early tide. On board were the French twins 
hastening back to their dear Paris. They had 
taken the boat because they had heard Myrtle say 
she would take it. They had searched in vain 
for her. Their two hearts beat with one regret. 

As the steamer swept by the statue Myrtle 
read the name. 

*'That was to be my steamer," she said; and 
she laughed as she called: 

"I wish you bon voyage! Wish us the same! 
New York is good enough for us!" 




n5 ' 89 



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